Resisting Everything but Temptation

Day 8, for resonant: Some characters you love as characters and couldn't bear to spend five minutes with if they were real people?

This was surprisingly difficult for me. I kind of distinguish between villains that I love as villains (Kronos, Thrawn, [12 Monkeys character redacted], Lilah Morgan), villains I find genuinely lovable and possibly redeemable (Crowley, Catra), and characters I genuinely love, but wouldn't want to be around even for five minutes.

In the last category...

Boyd Crowder (Justified)
I genuinely love him, and can see the tragic aspect of the man he became, but wouldn't want to be around him for even five minutes, because a) likelihood of getting shot, high, and b) welll...everything else. Outside of those particular stories I read guiltily, I don't actually believe he's redeemable.

Deacon (12 Monkeys)
I'm already starting to see a pattern, here. The level of violence and cynicism these guys bring to the party is just too much for lil ol me. Too stressful. But I love him! In the right circumstances, I would be cool with hanging out with Deacon, but the likelihood of those circumstances seems low.

Sonny Steelgrave (Wiseguy)
See above! But I wouldn't mind being in the same room as him as an unnoticed observer. :) Would be good for the entertainment value. (I thought Al Swearengen would fit in this category, too...although, actually, I would probably enjoy meeting him.)

Charles Vane (Black Sails)
Yup, a definite pattern. Although...hm. Okay, I can think of one way I would like to spend five minutes with him.

Angel (Angel)
What would we talk about? We would both be SUPER awkward.

Most of my fandoms, I love them all too much for this list! Would I be embarrassingly tongue-tied around most of them? Absolutely. Would I be nervous around Hannibal Lecter? Yes. But it would be worth it.

If you haven't already, please pick a day and ask me anything you like. ♥

 It feels like everyone is holding their breath. I know I am.

hlh_shortcuts reveals happened, and I'm so pleased that my little Highlander/Justified pinch hit forhafital seems to have gone over reasonably well. That was a quick one! Thank goodness she mentioned Justified in her signup, and I had just finished rewatching the series a few days before. It's always a little nerve-wracking to write in a new fandom—especially one with such distinctive character voices. Of course, now I seem to be embroiled in a sequel that wants to run away with the bit.

Speaking of which, my assignment certainly threatened to do the same. It's always fun to write for dkwiliams and the last time I wrote for her, it was a pinch hit, romantic comedy sort of a thing, so I had the brilliant idea to try and do something similar. I have no idea why I thought I could map Duncan and Methos onto When Harry Met Sally, but as they say, it seemed like a good idea at the time. 

- I think I finished that HL vid for Escapade. ( Read more... )

- I tried something new at the gym last week—one of these things. Spoiler, this is NOT something that someone with lower spine problems should attempt. Jeez, self. OW. Hoping that the inflammation will subside soon. :P Frustrating!

- So far behind on all the television. I'm loving Agent Carter, liking Constantine, intrigued by 12 Monkeys, anxious about Elementary, kinda bored by Sleepy Hollow, mostly enjoying Justified, a little annoyed at Grimm, bored and frustrated by The Musketeers, missing Lost Girl, moderately pleased by Supernatural, and really, really far behind on The 100. Only about 2-3 episodes behind on everything else—including the HL rewatch. This is too much TV.

- I need a clone.

- Wishing a happy birthday to franzeska, with many wishes for a better 2015!

...and one more thing I wanted to share with you Justified fans, in case you didn't see it:

3 Times Rachel... by happywriter06

A lovely little Raylan/Rachel story that made me incredibly happy. More of this, please, show!

Double whammy of bad news this morning. I'm gonna follow movies_michelle's example, because, yeah, me too—fandom was the second biggest source of joy in my life this year.

So, the ( fannish end of the year meme... )

( Well, then. )

ETA: Fringe is renewed! Hallelujah! Thank you for the news, tzikeh!

I want to make several posts about panels and such at Escapade, but first, a post about the Escapade Saturday night vidshow. For those who got the DVDs, feochadn is responsible for the festive and stylish graphics, and the photographs used for them. She also (with help from melina and mlyn and I'm not sure who else? But not me!) made the vidshow itself flow smoothly and look and sound very nearly as perfect as possible.

My part of the job was to compose the show and master the DVDs. Since a few people asked me, I'll clarify that this year's show was about 50/50 submitted vids and requested vids. There have been many comments over the years about shows that were light on favorite fandoms, or light on slash vids, so this year I took the bit and ran with it a little, and composed a show that I thought would please the majority of the attendees and show an interesting variety of tones, fandoms, characters, musical styles, etc. while keeping in mind that this is very much a slash con. It was really interesting to see how that played out, and how the attendees responded. Maybe I learned some stuff. Let's hope! I do know that I adored this show and all the vidders who contributed, whether on their own or at my pleading.

VIDSHOW PLAY ORDER

1 Walking on the Sun by giandujakiss (Lost Girl)
2 *Cooler Than Me by anoel (Glee)
3 **Blackbird by Clucking Belles (Imagine Me and You)
4 Under the Sheets by almostgaby (Inception)
5 **Bad Romance by smutcutter (Star Trek: DS9)
6 Hateful by mlyn (White Collar)
7 **Stronger Than Dirt by fahrbotdrusilla (Watchmen)
8 *Mama Said Knock You Out by talitha78 (NCIS: LA)
9 *Lost Cause by gwyn_r (Justified)
10 *Breathe You In by Holdt (Stargate SG-1)
11 Something's Gotta Give by lamardeuse (Hawaii 5-0)
12 This Town's Religion by destina (Top Gun)
13 The Humbling River by feochadn (Red Cliff)
14 *Remembrance by hsv_fangirl (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace)
15 Trust No One by Loki (Supernatural)

INTERMISSION

16 *Running Up That Hill by gwyn_r (Prison Break)
17 All the Way by greensilver (Invisible Man)
18 Heartbreaker by destina and barkley (Southland)
19 Critical Hit by jarrow (Big Bang Theory)
20 Little Plastic Castle by marina (Lost Girl)
21 Not Responsible by lamardeuse (Sherlock)
22 *Pocketful of Sunshine by talitha78 (Kings)
23 They Want More by bironic (Jurassic Park)
24 *Sex and Reruns by greensilver (Community)
25 *When I'm Up I Can't Get Down by deejay (Takin' Over The Asylum)
26 Square One by killabeez (Appaloosa)
27 Are We Real? by wistful_fever (Hawaii 5-0)
28 Last Friday Night by estalita_11 (Star Trek: TOS)

Three bonus vids on the DVD:
29 *Because I'm Awesome by anoel (Glee)
30 *Up Where We Belong by talitha78 (Community)
31 *Wicked Game by Holdt (Stargate SG-1)

I received several comments that people really enjoyed the combination submission-based/curated vidshow, because it included a lot of variety, plenty of slash (and nearly all of our current favorite fandoms), and a good pace/show length. These comments were so valuable-- thank you! ETA: Because I had a couple of people ask me, I've indicated:

* = Vid submitted to the show (as oppposed to requested by me)
** = Premiering vid submitted to the show

A general comment from me about something I noticed at the vid review: the vast majority of these vids were stronger as the vid went on. This became quite apparent to me as we watched about the first minute of each vid, then turned it off to talk about it. It makes sense, that we'd save all the best stuff for the end of the vid -- but it sort of made me wonder if we should concentrate a bit more on winning our audience over in that first minute, especially in a multifandom con setting. Vids that stood out to me as not sharing this unbalanced weaker-at-the-beginning feeling were "Running Up That Hill," "The Humbling River," "Something's Gotta Give," and "Mama Said Knock You Out" -- which, interestingly, received some of the most universally positive feedback and reaction from the audience. I don't think this is coincidence.

Smutcutter and M'lyn ran the vid review. They identified several vids that they wanted to talk about, and then we spent the last twenty minutes or so taking requests from the audience. I wrote down what people said, but not who said it, and tried to clarify the context a bit. So, what follows are the notes I took more or less as things were said, pretty close to unvarnished except where I tried to contextualize the sense of the conversation.

( Read comments from the Vid Review panel on Sunday )

That was a lot of coding, and I'm pretty wiped out, so please let me know if I made any mistakes in the links or anything. And please do feed the vidders, if you can!

Just had a call from my mom that my grandma has pneumonia, isn't responding to medication, and they are calling hospice now. I talked briefly to my grandma, and she knew my voice, though it sounded like it hurt her to talk. I'm glad it will be fast. She's been uncomfortable and in pain for most of the last two years, and her condition has deteriorated steadily, so it's time. Still, it hurts my heart.

Been having a hard time enjoying much of fandom lately, and I was sort of thinking of asking this anyway, but now I really need it for later today. I would love some recs for first-time stories in a select handful of fandoms, particularly if they have some heft to them and tend toward the slow-build type of story, and if they're romantic or make you feel good. Do you guys have any recs for particular favorites of the following variety?

- Hawaii Five-O (Steve/Danny)
- Fringe (Lincoln/Olivia, or Lincoln/Charlie/Olivia, but NOT Fauxlivia)
- Sherlock BBC (Sherlock/John)
- Friday Night Lights (Jason/Tim if it ends happy and doesn't make me want to kill myself)
- Lost Girl (Bo/Kenzi or Bo/Dyson/Kenzi)

( shows I am watching, and shows I am not watching - a few spoilers for shows in tags )

I really screwed up something on ksarchive.com yesterday. It's been under attack by spambots and in cleaning up bogus accounts, I accidentally deleted a legitimate user's account. Ugh. She was so nice about it, too. Better than I deserve.

Also in menstrual agony. Mentally preparing self for trip to mom and dad's. Send chocolate, stat.