Lurker Central

RIP, Elisabeth Sladen.

This news felt like a punch in the gut. I don't think Doctor Who as we know it today would exist without Liz Sladen's Sarah Jane. She was the Doctor's partner in crime in a way that really hadn't been done before and was my favorite of Four's companions (no slight to Leela and Romana, both of whom I love desperately.) It's obvious in every frame just how fond Tom Baker's mercurial madman is of his Sarah Jane.

Goodbye, Sarah. Say hello to the Brig for the rest of us.

(I wonder if they'll do an episode. They'll almost have to, don't you think? Sarah leaves such a hole in the Doctor Who universe. God, just thinking about Martha or Mickey calling the Doctor with the news.)

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62. Fuck cancer. (Apologies for the language. But seriously, fuck cancer.)

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Let's have a meme (grabbed from musesfool: Name me a character! I will tell you:

* How I FEEEEEL about this character
* All the people I ship romantically with this character
* My non-romantic OTP for this character - NB: I'm taking this as meaning platonic BFFs or hetero lifemates or whatever
* My unpopular opinion about this character
* One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Any character! If I don't know them I'll just make stuff up.:)

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That's it. I'm starting the Angsty Fic of Angst tonight. It has been decided.

* Reply to this post with ICON ME! and I will pick five of your icons.
* Make a post (including this info) and talk about the icons I chose.
* Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
* This will create a never ending cycle of icon glee...

selenak chose:



Three of my loves: Deadwood, Tombstone and Brian Kinney on QAF. So you could imagine that when Gale Harold showed up on Deadwood playing Wyatt Earp I was all a-squee. I really liked show's the dark take on Wyatt and Morgan; one of my biggest disappointments with how the show "ended" was that we never got any resolution on that storyline. I would have paid good money to have had a "The Earps and Doc Holliday raise hell in Deadwood" story.



Oh, Guerrero. I still haven't posted about that last episode, but I'm still all "oh, my heart about it. *Sigh* Needless to say, Guerrero is my favorite character and I like the framing of this shot.



Kosh. Kosh is my favorite character on B5, another in a long line of cryptic mentor figures living in my heart. ( spoilers )



My OTP! These two had me the moment she called him "Baby Doll." Fun and flirty and hopelessly head over heels for each other. This is also my general Squee! icon.



The Crow is one of my favorite movies. I saw it for the first time at 14 in an empty theater and cried my eyes out, and it still hits me every time I see it. Eric lighting up the fire crow after taking out T-Bird is such a striking visual and just a gorgeous shot.

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I discovered a new drabble comm! slashthedrabble! I belonged to a Heroes drabble comm back when that fandom was more active and always had a lot of fun with it. And the best part is that it's not just strictly 100 words; you can write a classic 100 word drabble or stories of precisely 200, 300, 400, or 500 words.

This week's prompt is the Evil Overlord list! Come play!

( Spoilers for Salvage & Reclamation. That's why you don't let Guerrero come up with the plan, Winston )

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I haven't forgotten about the 5 Questions meme. I am just a loooooser. As penance, check this out:
SMALL FANDOMS FRIENDING MEME

Is it wrong to post two memes in a row? Because I really love this one, too (ganked from gehayi:

Give me one character from a book or book series, film or film series, or TV show that I know (because I don't want to offer opinions about characters I know nothing about) and I will tell you:

1. My OTP for them.
2. Runner-up pairing.
3. Honourable mention(s).
4. Crack pairing(s).
5. Ship everyone else seems to like, but I don't.

I'm watching an episode of Monk on demand right now, and this guy is the most jovial murderer I've ever seen.

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I confirmed the other day that my car CD player can play mp3 CDs, and let me tell you, it is glorious. My Zen is ancient and won't sync up with Vista (and I've lost the disc for it, anyway) so for the past few months I've been doing without. This is almost like having my Zen all over again. Nothing improves a dark commute like belting out "Holy Diver" at the top of your lungs. (Has anyone actually listened to the lyrics of that song? They're gloriously nonsensical. "Ride the tiger/You can see his stripes so you know he's clean/Oh don't you see what I meeeaaaaaaannnnnnn?" That is just wonderful nonsense.)

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From last week's fannish5:Five canon moments that turned a casual fandom into a hardcore fandom for you.

Heroes: Peter goes to rescue Claire in "Homecoming." I love comics, so obviously I was a fan of Heroes from the beginning but Peter going in to rescue Claire even though he had no powers, no plan and was very sure that is was going to get him killed won my love. I can never resist heroes who do the right thing because dammit, someone has to do it, especially when doing the right thing can cause the hero nothing but trouble. Claude going back to rescue Peter from Mohinder's apartment a few episodes later provoked the same reaction (Is it really any surprise I shipped them?)

Doctor Who: "Dalek." "I saw it happen. I made it happen." And then Rose saving him at the end, just by standing there and not letting him fall. Oh, Doctor. That episode ripped out my heart and danced a tango on it.

Sherlock Holmes: "The Norwich Builder" (Granada TV series) There's a scene in "The Norwich Builder" where Jeremy Brett's Holmes is examining a crime for clues and steps up on a narrow railing with such grace that I remarked that if D&D elves were real, that was how they would move. I don't know why it struck me so much, but it did; it helped that TNB is one of those few cases where Holmes is at a loss which makes his solving the crime all the more satisfying. And then the next episode was "The Blue Carbuncle," where Holmes looks at a hat for a few hours and deduces that a man's wife no longer loves him. I never had a chance.

Kushiel's Legacy: There's a scene in the first book where Phedre gets kidnapped and her sworn bodyguard is forced to creep underneath a bridge to be able to rescue her undetected. And he didn't even like her, but dammit, he'd sworn vows. I have a big weakness for Knight Templar types and Joscelin hits a lot of those buttons; that scene was when I finally forgave him for being Phedre's love interest and not the childhood friend I'd been shipping her with.:) And I was already enthralled with the book, but that was when it tipped over from, "Oh, this is cool!" to "Well, no going to class for me today."

Watchmen: The Handshake. Have I mentioned that I am helpless before unlikely yet passionate friendships? Or that Rorschach and Nite Owl remind me of a deeply crazy version of Wyatt and Doc from Tombstone?

Another meme from gehayi:

Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile."

I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity

Update your journal with the answers to the questions

Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions (I'll also answer more, if asked)

She asked:

1) You can enter another reality for as long as you choose, but it has to be a fictional one. Which fictional universe do you pick and why?

I'd love to ride in the TARDIS. The constant threat of death would be worth the chance to see Alexandria at its height, watch Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash perform on the same bill or stand under a flock of passenger pigeons big enough to block out the sky. And I think Fiance and I would make awesome companions.:)

2) What are your favorite and least favorite fairy tales?

Least favorite first: I had a big book of fairy tales when I was young, and one of the stories was called "Babes in the Woods." In the story a brither and sister are dropped off in the forest by their parents (I don't remember if a stepmother was involved), and they wander around until they fall asleep and die. Then all the forest animals are so moved by their plight that they all come and cover the bodies with leaves. Forget how depressing that is, that is not a story. Seriously, people.

Favorite: probably Beauty and the Beast, whether the ending is happy or not. I'm pretty sure my fangirling of Phantom of the Opera comes partly from it being a BatB variation, with a healthy dollop of Gothic vampire lore mixed in.

3) How did you get into D & D?

Fiance and I found out there was a weekly game in the game store in the basement in the nearby mall and we joined in; this was right after 3.5 came out. I'd done email-based rp but this was my first ongoing table top game, but Fiance was an old hand and my sister was kept me updated on her games, so I'd been hoping for a opportunity to jump in on a game would come up. I played a wild elf ranger and still have a soft spot for elves.

4) If you were telling someone who hadn't been to New Jersey about it,
what are five things you'd say about the state to convince the other
person that New Jersey is fantastic?

1) The public transit system really is good. I only just felt the need for a car this year, and I'm 30.

2) We have great weather. Four seasons with none of them being crazy hot or cold, snow almost every winter but not debilitating blizzards, no serious risks of mudslides or tornados (we get tornados very occasionally, but not anything like the midwest) or hurricanes.

3) You can visit/work in NYC without having to live there. (Obviously this is my section of Jersey.:)

4) We get all the good concerts. Between the PAC, the Prudential center, the IZOD center, Giants Stadium, almost all of the big ticket acts stop here. And if you're an NFL fan, don't go in New York; you'd have to go to Buffalo to find the only team that plays there. And nobody wants that.:)

5) Jersey must be pretty awesome if House lives here, right? We have the best diagnostician in the world living right in our state! If any of us start seizing from some obscure malady we are golden.:)

5) What's the crackiest crossover you can imagine?

I'm a firm believer that there's no such thing as an undoable crossover. That said, an A Song of Ice and Fire/Yuugioh crossover would take some doing. (The kids would be so confused! Why isn't everyone carrying decks of cards? What's with all the swords? Although you know someone would be smart enough to put children who can channel destructive monsters to proper use.:)

cereta originally posted this in her journal, but this got long and I didn't want to clog up her comments.:) Prompted by a comment elsewhere, give yourself omnipotence for a minute. Well, specific omnipotence. What are things you would do to specific TV (or movie/comic/book) sources if you (a) could just snap your fingers and (b) didn't have to worry about fallout (that is, everything would work out just lovely). I know, this is confusing. Let me explain by example.

If I ran the world:

1) Vic Sage would show up on Smallville. He'd be played by Damian Lewis, snarky and frustrated and righteously, furiously angry at the injustice of the world. He would have his comics day job and his DCAU conspiracy theories; he'll have figured out who Green Arrow and all the rest are because he's brilliant and that's what he does. The Question would come to Metropolis with the goal of keeping the rest of the heroes honest and exposing that aliens did in fact land on Earth, but would eventually discover that Clark's secret is one worth keeping. He would be Clark's link to the gritty underbelly of humanity, a conscience to keep Clark from going all Krypton!OMG. (similar to Batman's usual role in Clark's life, but without Batman's tendency to...overpower things.:)

2) This would be the next Batman movie: Bring in Azrael as a flashy, cop-and-public friendly vigilante who publicly vows to bring down the Bat menace---only his adoring public doesn't know that Jean-Paul Valley, the man behind the good PR, is a dangerous psychotic who genuinely wants to be a good hero but has a harder time controlling his violent impulses with each bust.

Of course, Bruce doesn't know that; while suspicious, he's willing to give the new guy a chance. He's still Batman, just with a lower profile---instead of bringing down the mob, he's busting the occasional thief. In fact, one night he comes upon a particularly attractive cat burglar who just barely gives him the slip; the very next day he meets a emerging socialite named Selina who seems very, very familiar. Since neither of them are morons they both quickly figure things out, and with Azrael seemingly taking over his job Bruce starts to think that maybe he can move on from Rachael and start to become human again.

Then someone commits a series of crimes that seem to have no purpose or motive. Everyone's baffled, including Azrael (which doesn't help his mental state) until Bruce realizes that while taken individually the crimes don't make sense, they're all connected. Like a riddle.

The Riddler's trying to lure the Dark Knight out of hiding; he's sharp enough to have realized that Azrael's close to cracking, and the wants the Bat to know it too (and besides, Batman's such a good chess partner). He's not a killer, but if he has to put a certain cat burglar in Azrael's crosshairs to get the Bat's attention...well, so be it.

Once he accepts that Azrael does need to be taken down, the full scope of the problem hits him: while Gordon's on his side, his only other ally is a thief of dubious morality; moreover, he's getting his information from someone who claims his name is E. Nygma and uses question marks as fashion accessories.

But as Azrael finally crosses the line, Batman knows it's going to have to do. There's only room for one Dark Knight in Gotham. One is going to have to go.

Batman: Resurrection. July 2011. Riddle me this, Batman....

3) Jamie would come back for one last adventure. And a few episodes later so would Fitz, raw and angry at being left but so relieved that the Doctor's alive it wouldn't matter. Then when he and the Doctor finally part ways again he would join Torchwood and flirt up a storm with Jack.

4) Three words: The Four Doctors. (Eight, Nine, Ten and Eleven, all together.)

5) Comics Tony Stark would be just as charming and likeable as movie!Tony, and the family dynamic he has with Pepper and Rhodey would carry over, too.

6)Renee Montoya/Question II would get her own series back, and it would be set in Hub, not Gotham, dammit. And she would have an on again, off again thing with Scandal Savage.

7) House would finally make it clear that House and Wilson are sleeping together and have been on and off for ages. Moreover, it just slip out casually, like during a differential, not during a big event episode, and the dynamic would stay exactly the same.

8) Deadwood would get another season, and the plot line with the Earps wouldn't have been dropped. Moreover, things would get bad enough between them and the Pinkertons that Wyatt would have to put out a call to his old friend Doc --- much to Bullock and Swearengen's dismay, since they now have to deal with this on top of their other problems.

9) Martian Manhunter would come back and get his own series again --- a good series. He would re-embrace his John Jones persona and go back into the PI business.

10) Claude would come back on Heroes. And it would be awesome.

Ganked from penknife:Ask me a fandom, and I will tell you:

+ OTP
+ Runner-up
+ Honorable mention(s)
+ Crack pairing(s)
+ Ship everyone else seems to like, but I don't

Eight years ago the sun still felt like August and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Today is cold and raining and windy, and it feels so much more appropriate to the day than that terrible, scorching, empty blue.

I never lived in New York (although I worked there briefly), but I used to take the PATH into Chinatown all the time. A few weeks before 9/11 I was on the WTC train making an anime run before the fall semester started. The car was crowded and while I had a seat, not everyone did; among the standing was a group of four or five sharp-dressed, Japanese businessmen and women and I spent most of the ride quietly listening to them all speak in Japanese and trying to pick out words I knew. (Because deep down I am that kind of otaku.:) We all got out at the same stop, me walking down to Canal street and them heading towards WTC.

A few days after the attack I was in the Hoboken PATH station; for those who weren't in the area, for weeks after most of the walls of the PATH were covered with Missing flyers for people who were never going to be found. One of these flyers were of a young Japanese woman in a business suit, and I spent about five minutes staring at it trying to remember if she was one of the people I'd been eavesdropping on in that PATH car. I'll never know if she was, or if any of the other people in that group made it out.

But I think of her every year, and of all of the other people I'll never share a PATH train with or pass on the street again.

We still remember.

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Lightening the mood, a meme from selanak!

Pick five of your favourite shows, in no particular order, before you read the below questions, then answer them!

1. Doctor Who
2. Lost
3. Heroes
4. Supernatural
5. Psych

( Questions and Answers )

Ganked from cereta:

You post a topic, list, category, whatever, in my comments section. (examples: "Five Things Bill Denbrough Remembers About His Childhood", or "Five Things Parker Decided Not to Steal" or "Five Things Jessica Will Never Tell Grady"). Then, in a separate post, I'll post the answers to your Top 5 ideas, according to me. Serious or fun!

Fandoms for best results: Watchmen, Doctor Who/Torchwood, B5, Star Trek, Star Wars, Burn Notice, Psych, Royal Pains, Supernatural (but not S4!), Firefly, Buffy/Angel. Anything in my interests I've forgotten about is fair game, too.:)