{look upon my works, ye mighty}

There's a meme opened up where you make gifts for random strangers or people on your flist. I think it's a fantastic idea. We just finished Sexual Assault Awareness month, had the mess with the Open Source Boobie Project and there's a feminism fiasco going on to do with WoC feeling marginalized, so something cheerful and positive is definitely a great idea from where I'm standing.

Currently, I have completed gifts for Dani and three total strangers.

Edit at Saturday, 9:10AM EST: Add in three more strangers and also, princessjessia.

Current total: 8 overall, 6 strangers, 2 friends.

I pretty much choose whom to give gifts for based off their username and if we have any shared fandoms. And I'll probably keep going until it maxes out on comments. If anyone reading this signed up as well, link me to your comment via a comment here and I'll throw something your way as well!

Anything you throw my way is ♥, pretty much. April was a grueling month and finals are coming up, and I am very easy to please.

the ☂APRIL☂ showers bring ✿MAY✿ flowers meme

So, as a result of the Dumbledore thing, I found out that Roger/Thom is canon (Alanna the Lionness series) which is also confirmed by the author here, that Warren Ellis doesn't get why it took so long for people to realize that Midnighter/Apollo IS canon and that Hugh Laurie, House's actor, would be willing to do a House/Wilson plot. Also, Hugh Laurie sounds like Blackadder. Worrying, that.

Oh yeah. Definitely a good time to be a slasher. Canon everywhere looks favorably upon us!

I am happy. ♥ I love it when fandom AND canon make me happy.

And to share the happiness, here's a meme I snagged from cairnsy:

For the first three people that reply to me and re-post this challenge, I will send you something. It will be random and awesome, or perhaps just lame. Whatever it is, I promise that I will get it to you in 365 days or fewer.

The only thing you need to do in order to participate is to be one of the first three to reply to this, AND post this very same thing on YOUR LiveJournal - cause it's fun to give people stuff.

And I'll be watchin' my f-list to make sure you re-post! Because I am a stalker.

To counteract that happiness, here's a meme from a_white_rain who is made of pure crack and making me read Tokyo Babylon and cheering on my Slade/Terra and Terra/Raven love:

Name three fics you think I will never, ever, ever write. In return, I will attempt to write a snippet of one of them.

Anyone who dares asks for three bits of thiefshipping will SUFFER, I swear it. ^_~ fan_dancer, have yourself a ball with this :P

Edit: Auction of Wonder Woman Art with proceeds going to domestic violence shelters. The world is made of pure WIN at the moment. ♥

Watch this.

It's one of the most fantastic speeches that I've ever heard, not just about everything that Bush has done, but also about how the American people chose to let him get away it. Context is that Alan Shore is an attorney whose secretary is on trial for tax evasion as a form of political protest.

Transcript of the speech.

Alan Shore: When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out to be not true, I expected the American people to rise up. Ha! They didn’t.

Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.

Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorists suspects, locked them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.

And now, it’s been discovered the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens. You and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough. Evidentially, we haven’t.

In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is we’re okay with it all. Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal wiretappings, prison without a fair trial - or any trial, war on false pretenses. We, as a citizenry, are apparently not offended.

There are no demonstrations on college campuses. In fact, there’s no clear indication that young people seem to notice.

Well, Melissa Hughes noticed. Now, you might think, instead of withholding her taxes, she could have protested the old fashioned way. Made a placard and demonstrated at a Presidential or Vice-Presidential appearance, but we’ve lost the right to that as well. The Secret Service can now declare free speech zones to contain, control and, in effect, criminalize protest.

Stop for a second and try to fathom that.

At a presidential rally, parade or appearance, if you have on a supportive t-shirt, you can be there. If you are wearing or carrying something in protest, you can be removed.

This, in the United States of America. This in the United States of America. Is Melissa Hughes the only one embarrassed?

( Continued transcript of the speech. )

[/transcript]

I adore that speech. I adore him. I have to admit, I've only watched one ep of the show but watching him soapbox on YouTube is FANTASTIC.

ego_chan asked for HP fic recs. I got so carried that I ended up with enough recs to fill a post, so under the cut, there are recs for Lucius/Severus, Draco/Severus, James/Lily, Narcissa/Lucius, Regulus/Remus, Lily/Narcissa, Pansy/Luna, Cho/Hermione, Tonks/Hermione, Bellatrix-gen and Hermione/herself. Some have sex, others don't and all have a little desc saying what its appeal is.

( Recs galore, take whatever you like. )

Meme time!

Leave me a comment asking for a rec, and list all the fandoms you'd want me to find you a rec for. Then repost this in your journal.

Feel free to skip that last step if you're busy or just lazy. ^_~

No charges pressed!

I have to admit, I really love the idea of a guy defending his ex-girlfriend's privacy by throwing a can of baked beans at a reporter.

Of course, I'm also one of those people who think that celebrities and their lives aren't interesting in the least and the paparazzi should just back off already, but still, Hugh Grant managed to both amuse me and make me feel vaguely proud of him for standing up for his ex.

...Please note, throwing a baked bean can at a reporter for trying to spy on your ex-girlfriend is different to spitting on one for trying to take a photograph of you. I'm still disgusted with Avril Lavgine for the latter, but I have to admit, Hugh Grant's coming off as pretty chivalrous in my eyes right now.

I'm always weirdly pleased when people stand up for each other. If nothing else, lj strikethrough '07 was awesome because of how quickly the el-jay users banded together to coordinate things like keeping track of deleted journals/comms, spreading the word, starting up protest memes, switching userpics, etc. Newsies has a special place in my heart because it taps into the 'people really can do good together!' idea that I not-so-secretly love, especially because I think it's so unrealistic.

Oh, and a note on userpics -- I didn't change mine for the strikethrough protests, and I rarely do change mine to jump on bandwagons, but I do think that userpics are an effective way of getting a message across. Meaning that if people want to make/use icons about strikethrough '07, I think they should go right ahead.

On el-jay, they're the equivalent of someone's t-shirt to me. If I see a political icon, I react to it the same way I would if they were wearing a political t-shirt, either with a mental sigh or by making a casual comment like 'nice t-shirt' or 'icon love!', depending on the situaton.

If I had more of an interest in how societies work (or, alternatively, more time!), I'd probably spin off onto a tangent about how my flist is like a microsm of el-jay. There are the people who are still wary of Six Apart, the people who are backlashing into being anti-fandom, the people who think they're safe now and it's over, and the people who are completely indifferent to it.

I probably fall in the category of 'still wary', just because as long as I have a paid account, livejournal remains a product to me. If I buy a book, I expect it to still have all its pages, not have some ripped out for having inappropriate material. If I'm given a new book by a friend, fresh from the bookshop, and it's missing pages, then I'd complain to the bookshop or the company that printed the book (obviously not the friend's fault). If I'm given a second-hand book by someone, then fine, it's a freebie and I know it's going to be used already so no complaining about its quality.

Please note, I'm not saying that free users don't have the right to complain about changes they dislike to livejournal, but my point is that if Six Apart wants to run livejournal like a business, then they need to listen to their customers.

In this case, they're doing that a little late, but they are listening, so I'm pleased with them for that but still definitely wary. Especially because of the rumors that they're thinking about becoming an IPO.

...And wow, this entry rambled. In conclusion, have some bullet points!

1. Hugh Grant is awesome for defending his ex-girlfriend.
   
2. People are awesome when they look out for each other.
   
3. Userpics do matter.
   
4. My flist is very diverse.
   
5. Six Apart needs a better PR department, if nothing else.
   
6. Passion is ♥.
   
7. Apathy doesn't just kill. Apathy kills excruciatingly slowly.

Link of the Day: Yu-Gi-Oh Online!

Want to watch Yu-Gi-Oh but too broke to buy the eps and can't find torrents for the eps you want or lacking in the time to download them? Hit the above link! They have most of the eps from all the season online, they load quickly enough that you can watch it while it's loading with minimal pauses (for me, anyway), and the quality is pretty good. XD Dub, though, for those people who care about the difference between the two.

Personally, I prefer the manga to the anime, but Ryuuji's cheerleaders always crack me up and you can never have too many Marik's crotch-shots. Jou in a dog suit is pretty hilarious as well, and something Savior mentioned recently made me want to watch Mai's backstory again. *needs to find which ep that is, though*

Favorite eps, personally, are 46&47, because those are the ones where Ryuuji shows up, 76 because it has Ryuuji attacking people via the use of dice, 96 & 96 because those are when Marik and Bakura duel, 106 & 107 where Ryuuji, Honda and Shizuka all duel in a trio, 153-155 because it's got kickass evil!Mai, and 194&195 because it has Seto versus Siegfried. XD I also like some of the Pegsy eps, but I can't find episode summaries for them to figure out which numbers those are.

"I wouldn't play you even to save the world."
"But would you play me to destroy it?"

Attribute the lines to anyone you damn well want. XD

In other news, I've been playing around with only_fiction nearly all day, trying to get tags lined up and indented in the sidebar. I did find something that would work for it, but it required me having a paid account and I am not getting a paid account for my fic journal. Nope, no way. I'll fiddle around with it some more tomorrow.

Plus, I now have an awesome Mac/Vista icon, courtesy of xinda and inspired by Allow which is a slashy Mac/Vista fic based off the this commercial. Yes, she wrote a fic that's over 6K of words based on a thirty-second commercial, and she made it interesting. Warning, fic in question might not be for the faint of heart since it portrays the two networking in great detail, but if you can take explicit slash, go for it.

googlebrat's Cybersex fic is still the best long series of techslash that I've ever read, though. It's what got me squeeing over Alienware, after all! Unlike the above rec, though, this fic is about real PCs and Macs and Linux and so geeky that it made me squee with every little injoke that I actually got.

In semi-geeky talk, I finally watched Spiderman 2 today, squeed a little more over Kyle Rayner (I will soon make a post saying why even non-comics people need to love him), and preened about the fact that xinda is very likely to visit me for AnimeBoston since my parents said that I can send her a hundred dollars to help with travel costs and a roundtrip plane ticket isn't much more than that. XDDD It'll be so awesome if she and Muse-y can make it.

I also stumbled across a fic that's Seto(YGO)/Lex(Smallville). This mostly amused me because not only do I like Smallville and have YGO as one of my main fandoms (despite katarik tempting me to the DC side, evil thing ^_~), but I've been RPing Ryuuji/Lex and Seto/Ryuuji lately. Though I really do think that Seto and Lex are alike and that the fic works well for what they were like when they were young. The author clearly has a good grasp on Seto and the driving forces behind him, and her Lex is precisely as w00bie-like as he is in the show.

Also, on a slash level, the Green Goblin in the first Spiderman movie is so, so gay. He's so gay, it even affects Norman and makes him slink on all fours, crawling over his own rug. I mean, if the mirror scene isn't slashy, I don't know what is. Speaking of which, I absolutely loved the actor there -- he did a fantastic job of changing his facial expressions to make the person in the mirror look completely different from himself. Green Goblin, sans costume, is disturbingly sexy. Why are the psychos always the cute ones?

I'm usually hard to please with movie-adaptions of source material that I love (one example being LotR, another being Catwoman), but the first Spiderman movie was pretty good. XD The second failed to reel me in as tightly, and I thought that Peter walking away from a guy he could see being beaten in front of him was kinda off-base, but the first was definitely good. Worth watching in my opinion, anyway.

Matt (daemonsadvocate) and I are officially together.

I'm probably going to be babbling about relationship stuff (along with a full explanation of how/what/when/where/why/WHO) in the future, so if you're interested in hearing that stuff, drop me a comment specifically saying you want to be on my r-life aka romance life filter. ♥

It's the middle of finals. One week from now, I will be gone from the Net and in Austria.

And yet, I took a walk out to the library today, paid a fine for burning a book (by ACCIDENT, I leant it against the cooker while, well, cooking and failed to notice it was catching on fire until the scorching scent grew overwhelming by which point the cover's corners and the edges of the inner pages was burnt black), and borrowed some books. Including the first series of a volume called Absolute Boyfriend which I now want the rest of, for reasons which range from pretty boys (shallllllow) to the fact that it sounds like Peach Girl with a sci-fi angle. Peach Girl being a really girly shoujo manga I borrowed from the Somerville library, and have memories of being fascinated by how incredibly bad it was.

Absolute Boyfriend doesn't even have good reviews!

On a more amusing note, one of the books I borrowed was Son of Rock by Gordon Korman, and it had the following quotation:

The musicians of the Concussed festival were a motley lot who belonged on Yu-Gi-Oh cards more than any concert stage.

Dude, if I saw a band that dressed like any of my favorite monsters (including Harpie's Brother and Fire Sorceress), I'd so buy their music just for the hell value of it.

P.S. Savior, MSN is being a bitch to me for a change and not letting me see your messages or even reply, even though I signed in and out to try to fix it. I'm going to turn off my comp, restart and see if that fixes it.

Fixed. Also, since if I'm writing really fluffy het fic because of a request, O ri Chori from Lagaan is probably not the best thing to have playing in the background.