This is in no way a deep or serious set of reactions to this episode. BUT THAT'S OKAY.

( spoilers + squee )

Okay, why didn't I know until now that Natalie Morales is in White Collar? Is this a reason for me to start watching? And by that I mean, is that a good enough reason (and is she in it enough) to justify getting into another show when I have no time?


PS, I still love The Middleman TO DEATH. *misses*

( SPN 5.10, Abandon All Hope )

ETA: I think what I need after this episode is ( a vid )

O flist!

As someone who has not seen either of the past two SPN episodes, but wants to watch the most recent one more because of all the excited reactions on the Internets, is there anything from "The Real Ghostbusters" that I would absolutely need to know to watch "Abandon All Hope"?

Have I mentioned how much I'm loving Castle? I didn't even get into it until this season/school year when slylilgoblin made me start watching, and we're actually still a few episodes behind on this season, but we watched a couple today (including the Halloween one!) that filled me with absolute glee. So glad I thought to request it for Yuletide, among other awesome things. I'm not obsessed, but it's definitely my happy place right now - I can count on it to make me happy pretty much always, kind of like The Middleman did last year, or Avatar did this summer - and it's the only show I'm watching right now that makes me feel that way.

In other news, slylilgoblin is in possession of the Star Trek DVD! And we are watching it tonight! I can totally study Calculus while it's playing since I've seen it so many times, right? JUST SAY RIGHT.

Finally watched Merlin 2.08 last night with the usual crew. I know a lot of people have written reaction posts with much more insightful and interesting remarks than mine would be, but one question I had was, did anyone else’s mind immediately go to a certain early Smallville arc?

I’m talking, of course, about the ( spoilers for Merlin 2.08 'The Sins of the Father', and some old Smallville eps )

Thoughts?

Firstly, can I just say? I am so fucking excited for Yuletide. I'm absolutely thrilled about all the fandoms I've requested, and just the fact that you're writing something for me in one of those fandoms is pretty much amazing. And I know everyone says this in their Yuletide letters, but that's because it's entirely true: please write something that you enjoy! No matter what my prompts or requests are, I'm sure I will love a fic more if you're enthusiastic about writing it.

Of course, if you would like a little more info on the kinds of fic that I like, I've realized that I absolutely love plot, especially in the fandoms I've requested. Even if there isn't a fully formed story, it would be lovely to have a little action of some sort in the fic, maybe a scene that progresses somewhere rather than just a character sketch. That being said, characterization is certainly the most important thing for me, so as long as the characters ring true I'll be overjoyed. These qualities are especially true because I've mostly requested gen, though I'll say a little more about what I like each individual fandom, including romantic stories.

( National Public Radio RPF )

( Castle )

( Band of Brothers )

( Chronicles of Chrestomanci: The Magicians of Caprona )

And finally, thank you so, so much!

Love,
Deepa

Right, so, posting. That's something I should actually start doing again, huh.

Um, went to a training for my work today where I was given delicious bagels for free and also got to spend time with my team (we do this program that sends teams of college kids to work with local pre-schools) who are all awesome, so that was nice. Then hung out with kaydeefalls and met tricksterquinn for the first time today when I crashed their Band-of-Brothers-watching party, which was quite fun and very nice of them to include me. Also had the most terrific spinach strawberry salad with mushrooms, chicken, and lovely balsamic dressing for dinner with friends, and possibly some Pinot Grigio when we got back to our apartment. I think I'll count today as a win.

Also, Yuletide assignments! SO EXCITED. Dear Yuletide letter will come soon when I'm feeling less conked out. Really need to stop going on LJ in bed; it makes the whole falling-asleep-on-your-book a lot worse when it's your laptop. I'm sure everyone reading this can sympathize.

No food in the fridge, no sleep, midterms, disappointing grades, Virginia, Maine. Today kind of sucks.

At least Referendum 71 looks like it's passing in Washington, even though I DIDN'T GET TO VOTE FOR IT because stupid college mail service didn't deliver my ballot in time. Yesterday kind of sucked too.

Oh my fucking god, I haven't properly been on LJ/DW/anything fannish in over a month.

Seriously, I think that's the longest time I've voluntarily spent off the Internet since...2005, when I did NaNo and kept myself off so that I'd get it done. There's been traveling, of course, but that doesn't count for "voluntarily"; and there have certainly been times when I haven't posted for a long time, but I've always still been lurking around and reading my flist and generally keeping up on what's going on. But due to personal issues + computer crashing + midterms, I just actually haven't been in fandom (except for seeing fannish people in RL and watching my shows) since the end of September.

And as of an hour ago, I now have a functioning computer with Windows 7 on it, and billions of recs and posts and such to pick through, and all of Sunday to overdose on fandom after Halloween's over. SO. PSYCHED.

AHAHAHA MERLIN.

No spoilers, but I loved it, especially because we had a bit of a party with lots of awesome fannish people that also included ratatouille (which, as veverghede pointed out, does include the word "rat" in it), bread, cheese, strawberry spinach salad, royal cake, and, once again, poisoned wine. We watched "Labyrinths of Gedref" to warm up, and then went into the S2 premiere, which was sweet and fantastically slashy and at some points hysterical. And now I'm exhausted and have nothing else to say on the matter except that a) I love this show and b) I love my fannish friends even more. ♥

omg this is so so so late, but actually done! So: HAPPY (extremely belated) BIRTHDAY zephyrprince!

take a chance on me
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4300
Disclaimer: Definitely not mine, and, um, forgive me for anything I messed up in this universe?
Notes: Thanks to slylilgoblin, veverghede, and glass_moment for encouraging, beta-ing, and most importantly putting up with all my whining. I mean, seriously, thank you; even if I didn't always take your advice it all definitely helped. ♥ Title from ABBA because...well, do I need a reason? ABBA!

Summary: Five times McCoy didn't take a risk for Jim Kirk, and one time he did.

( 'That’s an order,' Jim said quietly, and McCoy was just about ready to kill whatever imbecile had put James T. Kirk in a position of command because this was clearly an abuse of power. )

Just returned from one of the best backpacking trips I've been on - we spent three nights in two different campsites, hiked 33 miles in the Central Cascades (granted, 13 miles of that were on a day hike that had us carrying smaller packs, but what a day hike), jumped in two ice-cold lakes (which is really quite an accomplishment for me; I've get cold really easily in water so I've always been a wimp about it, but either I've gotten better in recent years, or I've gotten so used to people forcing me to jump into cold water that after a certain temperature, it all feels equally freezing to me), had absolutely gorgeous weather the entire time, and of course got to hang out with my family and one of my best friends from home for a kind of last hurrah before returning to school.

The only downside: OW MY LEGS. My poor parents had to go to work today, while I'm sitting around the house trying my best not to climb any stairs.

Next: week of running errands before I leave on Sunday, but I don't think it will be as bad as usual. I'm excited enough about school that I actually pulled out my suitcase today to tentatively start packing. Guys, I hate packing, with a fiery passion. I don't think I've ever really started packing earlier than the day before a trip, and usually I just stay up the entire night before getting everything done last-minute. So here's another personal accomplishment, yay.

And: happy belated birthday, zephyrprince! Goodness you're old. Present coming soon. Ish. :D

Okay, why is there so little Star Trek podfic out there? Am I just looking in the wrong places? I'm used to assuming that most stuff will eventually be posted to jinjurly's audiofic site, but given that there are a grand total of six there (including ST: TOS, ST Reboot, and RPF), is that just not true for this fandom? Is there a secret cache somewhere that I haven't found?

This plea is brought to you from my last day of my internship, which has somehow managed to be the most boring, and although I have tons of other podfic on my iPod that could get me through the trials of database entry, I'm craving Star Trek. Grr.

Right, because I totally fail at posting anything when I say I will, here is the podfic that slylilgoblin and I recorded during her marvelous visit!

Featuring: my own inability to speak (cough, BLADLEY) being temporarily suppressed, her awesome Bradley James voice, some terrible/wonderful not-singing, two very similar voices, and a hilarious pronunciation of the word "soybean".

Also, you can blame most of the static on slylilgoblin's hair. No, seriously.

Title: Wherein Wooing Colin is Somewhat More Difficult Than Anticipated
Author: ifyouweremine
Reader: slylilgoblin and fiercynn
Pairing: Bradley/Colin
Rating: PG-13
Summary: “If you were hypothetically me and I were hypothetically courting Colin, what would you—and by you I mean me—do to win his heart and make him let you carry him off into the French sunset for a lifetime of sweetsweet lovemaking?” said Bradley.
File Type: mp3 (10.75 MB), 11:44 minutes
Temporary Link: Megaupload
Permanent Link: at the awesome audiofic site!
and: audiobook version, compiled by the amazing cybel

YAY!

Today’s the last day of this year’s ibarw (International Blog Against Racism Week) – not that you shouldn’t blog against racism all year around, of course. And this time I’ve actually had something I’ve been wanting to say, but it’s taken me all week to figure out how to say it.

hyaenid once brought up a point on whether she was allowed to identify as POC and, among other things, asked, “Is it cultural appropriation when it’s my own damn culture?”

My first answer was, of course not! At least, not for identifying as POC, which I personally see as an oppositional and wide-spread term that’s more about being not-white (and not having all the privileges associated with whiteness), just as “queer” is about being not-straight. But the question stuck in my mind, the idea that one can not only do a disservice to their own culture by misrepresenting it but actually appropriate it, and I’ve been applying it to many other issues and problems that come up in my mind. Which, actually, has happened a lot more often than I would’ve expected, especially in the past year or so.

See, I’m not white. I’m first generation Indian-American. But my parents never made a huge deal of impressing their cultures on me, even giving up on speaking their languages to me after I went to school and learned English, and we never lived in an area with a large Indian community. Most of my friends were non-Indian, so I spent a lot of my life thinking of myself as “not really Indian” and “almost-white” in my perspective. (I used to hate the term ABCD – “American-Born Confused Desi” – but I think after all this time I do have to admit to some amount of confusion.)

But – I’m really, really not white. What I am is excessively privileged in other ways: in socio-economic class, education, physical ability, identifying as cis-gendered, and in living in a place where my rights as a minority in race, gender, sexual orientation, religious identification (or, uh, lack thereof) are generally respected.

( more on Slumdog Millionaire, Avatar, and cultural appropriation from all directions )

Ugh, we're having an unprecedented heat wave over here. Which, okay, for Seattle means the temperature is going above 100 degrees. But because it's Seattle, no one has air conditioning, even a lot of public places and stores. They've been designating cool-down zones especially in the suburbs, which I don't think they've ever had before. If it goes above 101 today, it's a record high. D:

In better news, The Middleman is out on DVD! If you didn't get into this show last summer/fall when it came out and broke all the TV stereotypes about superhero shows and geek girls and female friendships and platonic relationships between men and women, well, get into it now. taraljc also has an awesome squee post which includes downloads of the table reading from Comic-Con of a "lost episode" by all the main actors. YAY.

eeek, I completely failed at wishing slylilgoblin a happy birthday yesterday because I was trying so hard to finish this on time, and I failed at that as well. D:

But! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YOU! I hope you like this even if only the title is actually an inside-joke. I actually came up with the idea for this fic three years ago, the summer after I first worked coffee and first fell in love with Lex Luthor, but never got around to writing more than a page of it. Now after all this time I've finally written Smallville fic, and it's pretty damn weird. Still! Here goes:

forever united here, somehow
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark/Lex (or maybe Clark/Lex/coffee)
Rating: PG
Spoilers: futurefic, but only follows canon up to Season 5, spoilers til then
Notes: augh, okay, the grasp of economics and trade and international development in this fic is completely bullshit, alright? If you can suspend belief enough for superheroes, please do so for those as well. PLEASE.

( forever united here, SOMEHOW )

being with you is so dysfunctional
I really shouldn't miss you, but I can't let you go
cause we BELONG TOGETHER NOW, yeah

I can has a femslash09 fic!

A Week In Diplomacy (Morgana/Gwen, PG), by zauberer_sirin

It's a story of a marriage prospect for Morgana, a visiting prince that the king hopes she'll marry, and the way that Gwen deals with it. The writing is lovely and flows beautifully, and her Gwen and Morgana are perfectly characterized, with some fantastic friendship scenes that they have with Merlin and Arthur as well. Gwen in particular broke my heart with her angry love for Morgana, the way she sees Morgana as selfish and lonely all in one, and the way that she deals with it.

Read and tell zauberer_sirin how awesome it is! Seriously, the yearly femslash ficathon is one of the best things ever.