Snagged from penknife:

Inspired by Doctor Who's "Turn Left:" Pick one of my stories and tell me a point in the tale that you'd change. Something tiny (e.g. "and then Fay chose silver glitter instead of gold") or big (e.g. "and then Rose was arrested instead of Jack") and I'll tell you how that one difference would have altered the course of the entire story.

I'm hoping this will help ease me out of my persisent inability/disinclination to write. We shall see.

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Name a fandom, and I'll give you the scoop on at least three of my unpopular opinions related to that fandom.


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This week, fannish5 asks which five characters would be most pleased if they could read what fans were writing about them, and which five would be most shocked.

( click for my lists )

Snagged from vilakins. This was originally an RP meme, and I guess it's supposed to be all one character, but I chose to interpret it otherwise.

I get a kick out of these icon memes; I'm fond of my icons and like showing them off, and when other people do them I enjoy seeing lots of their icons in the same place. It's the same principle as looking at people's bookshelves.

( icons under the cut )

Some of these are still unguessed, so I've added more names and/or surnames. New information is in bold.

4) Bellis Coldwine, Tanner Sack, Uther Doul, The Brucolac (The Scar by China Mieville, guessed by mosca)

7) Billy, Robert, Sarah, Wilfred (Regeneration by Pat Barker, guessed by absinthe_shadow)

9) Irma Wornow, Jeff Smax, Robin Slinger, Kemlo Caesar, Jackie Kowalski, Steven Traynor (Top Ten by Alan Moore, guessed by mab_browne)


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This version grabbed from oursin.

List three characters from ten favourite books
The challenge is to guess what the books are!

These are not necessarily main characters (and not necessarily not, either). Books listed in no particular order.

1) Eileen, Philip, Terry (The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, guessed by likeadeuce)
2) Charles, Elizabeth, Jane (Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, guessed by likeadeuce)
3) Istre, Nicolas, Philip (Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett, guessed by hagsrus)
4) Bellis, Tanner, Uther
5) Argaven, Genly, Therem (The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, guessed by brewsternorth)
6) Isabella, Edmund, Piers (Edward II by Christopher Marlowe, guessed by absinthe_shadow)
7) Billy, Robert, Sarah
8) Alec, Ralph, Reg (The Charioteer by Mary Renault, guessed by oursin)
9) Irma, Jeff, Robin
10) Alison, Geoffrey, Harry (The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, guessed by likeadeuce)

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I can't make my brain be productive, so here's a meme I grabbed from friendsfriends. I've removed one pointless question and changed the numbering from "random" to "consecutive."

I have a LOT of fandoms I'm interested in; please feel free to ask about any of them even if they're not my most active right this millisecond (exceptions are the Buffyverse, due South, and the X-Men, which I'm no longer following). If you ask about Doctor Who, maybe specify an era or even a particular Doctor?

Name a fandom, and I'll tell 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 I would shag anytime:
4. The character I'd slap:
5. Who are my 3 favorite characters.
6. What are my 3 favorite pairings.
7. The coolest thing about the canon:
8. The lamest thing about the canon:
9. My guiltiest pleasure in this fandom:
10. What story I wish I could read (or art I wish I could see):
11. What story I wish I had written/still want to write:

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The never-ending icon meme has come round again.

The Rules:

1. Reply to this post with 'Icons!', and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

It's a fun meme, and it gives me something to do while I listen to the shitload of music I just downloaded for free from amazon.com. (So far I've liked most of the Jagjaguwar sampler, especially Okervill River's "Lost Coastlines.")

astrogirl2 asked me about these icons: ( clicky )

Random thing #1: Shiny Withnail and I icon based on one of the recently rediscovered photos!

Random thing #2: I made two phone calls today! Those who like phone calls, or at least don't fear them, won't recognize why this is an achievement. But trust me, it is. I'd been putting these calls off for almost two weeks.

Random thing #3: Had a haircut today. This makes me happy. I'm always reluctant to spend the money, and even more so now that I dwell in Unemployment, but my hair is properly, boyishly short again and I feel more myself.

Random but hopefully less boring thing #4: You know how when you really like a particular actor, you can end up seeing movies you otherwise wouldn't? Well, Simon Pegg just announced that he's going to be in Ice Age 3 (doing a voice, obviously, since it's animated). Plus there's the Star Trek movie. And I'm weakening in my resolve not to see Run, Fat Boy, Run (title is appalling, Simon Pegg is not fat, ick ick ick). Simon Pegg + Dylan Moran + Thandie Newton = I have no principles. Has anybody seen this? Is it awful?

And a fictional-character meme, grabbed from nam_jai (who picked Fitz for me to discuss) and modified by me.

( several things about Fitz Kreiner )

Gakked from sebastienne; this version is nifty because there are pictures!

If you want to play, then:
1. Comment and I will give you the names of 3 fictional characters or celebrities.
2. Post this meme with your answers.
3. Provide pictures and the names of the three people.
4. Label which you would marry, shag, or cliff.


sebastienne went for a theme--characters generally known by just one name.

1. Servalan
2. Fitz
3. Rimmer

I remembered to turn on Safe Search before googling images of Rimmer. Go me!

( answers and pics below the cut )

ETA: Or if anybody just wants to play regular c/s/m, that would be great too.

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There are still two movies unguessed from yesterday's meme, so I repost the quotes here with hints.

1) "To be able to look your beloved in the eye and say, 'We did that together, as one. We chose each other above all others.' That's love. That's unexplainable. It's a secret." (Dark Harbor, guessed by likeadeuce, and why haven't more of you people seen this very cool movie?)

(Psychological thriller starring two highly regarded English actors, both playing Americans. At least two people on my flist have seen this one.)


8) "This is not a medical tattoo. It's a prophetic tattoo. Prophecy is ragged and dirty, so make it ragged and dirty." (Crash, guessed by angevin2 and likeadeuce)

(This controversial film has the same title as a later Oscar-winning film, but a completely unrelated story.)


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Snagged from all over the flist.

Pick twenty of your favorite movies, find a quote from each one and post them here for everyone to guess. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie. No Googling or IMDb searches, that's cheating!

( quotations under the cut )

Tragically, I am no longer in sunny Los Angeles, although I am in also-sunny Albuquerque, whence I will return home to cold, cold Minnesota on Tuesday. I have learned that LA is (a) larger than I expected, (b) hillier than I expected, and (c) a far, far longer drive from Albuquerque than I expected. And I now understand the meaning of the lines about Mulholland Drive and "Hollywood is under me" in the REM song "Electrolite," because Mulholland Drive goes up and up and up and once you're at the top, Hollywood is indeed under you, with a sheer 100-foot drop between you and some probably very famous people's back yards.

I had the Buffyverse on my mind throughout the trip, naturally. There was the big black glass skyscraper that must be Wolfram and Hart's headquarters, and the view of Catalina Island (where glossing and I once sent Giles and underage!Oz for a secret dirty weekend) from Topanga County Beach, and the Pacific Coast Highway (years ago I wrote about Oz driving along it). I'm feeling nostalgic for the Buffyverse now, although I'm also quite sure I've written every Buffyverse fic I have it in me to write.

Everybody in Los Angeles seemed to be talking about the Oscars (for example, the guy ahead of me in the checkout line at a comic book store in Burbank, who, as he explained to the clerk, was part of the camera crew for Access Hollywood and had been working very long hours in preparation for the Oscars), and it literally affected the fabric of the city in unmistakable ways. There were billboards everywhere, of course, and part of Hollywood Boulevard near the Kodak Theater was closed, as 47_trek_47 and I discovered when we tried to make a right turn there. After all that the whole business felt a bit local, almost personal, so I watched the Oscars tonight despite having seen virtually none of the nominated films. Unfortunately it was the most boring Oscar night I can remember. Whose idea was it not to show clips of the nominated actors? Have they been fired yet? And why the hell was Heath Ledger not included in the obituary montage?

I should go to bed now, but I saw this meme on penknife's LJ and can't resist it: Make a list of your favorite pairings and explain who would pick up the socks and why.

( laundry habits of fictional characters )

I feel asleep at about 10 pm last night while reading, and couldn't even wake up enough to turn the light off. Results: broken sleep, a Special Combo anxiety dream (I routinely have anxious dreams about travelling and anxious dreams about my mother; this one was about travelling with my mother), and waking up at 6 am feeling groggy and horrible. Ugh. I think I will nap later.

Anyway, this week's fannish5 meme is: Name five non-canoncial couples that you would like - or would have liked - to see get together in canon.

I could easily name twenty-five, so I'm limiting this a bit by only talking about fandoms whose original-form canon is still open. (I say "original form" to exclude things like the Buffyverse comics and the Doctor Who novels.)

ETA: Major spoilers for the BSG episode "Blood on the Scales." The spoiler is whited-out in the post but is visible in comments.

( my five couples )

My cooking plans for today have been scuppered by the fact that my housemate is sick and taking the day off work. Rattling around the kitchen making fish broth doesn't seem like the nicest thing to do in the circumstances (especially since I don't know what's wrong with her and it could as easily be tummy trouble as, say, a cold).

It's disappointing, because I have a beautiful little piece of tuna that I bought yesterday, which I was going to eat almost raw in noodle soup (with the fish only cooked by the hot broth poured over it). Instead I guess I'll crust the fish in sesame seeds, quickly saute it, and have it with rice. Tasty enough, I'm sure, but not what I was wanting.


I assuage my disappoinment with a meme, grabbed from flo_nelja.

Name one or more characters from any of my fandoms, and I'll tell you every pairing I've ever written them in, read them in, or even just thought about.

Now I'm off to the library; I'll answer when I get back.

penknife has created a very cool new meme:

Comment with a story I've written, and I will tell you one thing I knew, learned, or wondered about while writing the story that didn't make it onto the page.

All of my stories (except some really old Buffyverse ones that are on my website) can be found by using the "fic" tags in my sidebar.

(Icon has no relation to anything, except that it's new and I wanted to use it.)

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Two of my OTPs went unguessed; one is very obscure, one isn't.

3) Mutiny tests their love, but shoes confirm it. Too bad a hug's out of the question.

This is Henderson/York from Hyperdrive, a delightful BBC science fiction comedy that somehow has absolutely no fandom. *mopes*


9) Triangulation raised to an art form. But they don't mind sharing a room.

Bodie/Doyle from The Professionals. I made the clue overly obscure because I thought it would be too obvious otherwise (should have borne in mind that almost no one on my flist is into this fandom). The "triangulation" thing is actually my interpretation that the guys keep triangulating their desire for each other through various women, but it probably had people racking their brains for fandoms with trigonometry in them. "They don't mind sharing a room" is a reference to an episode where, for Innocent Plot-Related Reasons, they have to check into a hotel and are asked whether they mind sharing a room. The look they exchange is . . . interesting.


I had fun with this meme, and I hope more of you will do it so I can have more chances to guess.

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Five of my OTPs from this post have gone unguessed, so here they are again with more clues. A couple of the fandoms are obscure, but in each case there's at least one person on my friendslist who knows it.


3) Mutiny tests their love, but shoes confirm it. Too bad a hug's out of the question.

4) A marriage of true minds, despite one to five impediments and a very bad habit. (Holmes/Watson, guessed by wisdomeagle)

9) Triangulation raised to an art form. But they don't mind sharing a room.

11) It took time, death, and karaoke, but now they're a hunk of burning love. (Ted/Ralph from The Fast Show, guessed by doyle_sb4)

13) Gimlets drill a hole in the heart. The plastic surgery doesn't help either. (Philip Marlowe/Terry Lennox, guessed by likeadeuce)


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I grabbed this meme from elyssadc but restored it to what I think is the original version, with 15 pairings.

Pick up to 15 OTPs.
Describe them in less than 15 words.
Have your flist guess the OTP.

Some of these are on the obscure side, maybe, but these are all pairings I've either written fic for, posted discussion about, or listed in my user interests.


( clues under the cut )

I struck much luckier than I deserved at fandom_stocking. vandonovan drew me the most adorable Second Doctor/Jamie picture in the history of the universe; enigel wrote "Past and Present," a beautifully melancholy-yet-hopeful Philip Marlowe/Terry Lennox fic; st_aurafina wrote the absolutely amazing "Parklife," which is Harry Sullivan/John Constantine, and yes you read that right and it's the most unexpected but brilliant crossover pairing ever; and doyle_sb4 gave me a hilarious snippet of IT Crowd fic. (ETA: Everything can be read/seen here.)

Thank you all so much! I'm sorry I wasn't able to write any stocking stuffers, but I will try to belatedly correct that.


And in the mean time (meme time?), I meme.

( year in fandom meme )

Second meme, an old favorite that's going around again:

Ask me one fandom-related question in the comments. This can be fandom specific, general, or about fandom/lj stuff/fic writing/etc. in general.

Just one question, please, but it can (and perhaps should) have sub-parts.

Question can be as wacky as you want. Ask me about tv shows, characters, fanfic in general, fandom issues/meta, anything about any of my stories specifically. Whatever you want.

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