Otter's Rock

A listing of all my fic.  My personal favorites are marked with asterisks.





Crossovers:
*    Parallels.  Babylon 5/Star Trek: Deep Space 9.  “Surely you’ve heard enough stories of glorious triumphs to recognize the pattern.  And to know of the horrors you don’t see on the surface.”  Vir on Minbar, before Sic Transit Vir.
     An Apocalypse in Metropolis.  BtVS/Superman Returns.  Faith, Andrew, and a newbie Slayer get sent to Metropolis when the Council's seers predict an apocalypse.
     White House Slayer.  BtVS/West Wing.  "Chosen" has repurcussions for Donnatella Moss.
     What She Wants.  BtVS/Atlantis.  Faith gets what she wants, and she wants McKay.
*    Witching Hour (the Oops Remix).  A find-your-soulmate spell goes wrong (just prior to Lover's Walk, during the whole "clothes fluke" thing).
     Reboot: the Chase.  Star Trek: the Next Generation/Stargate: Atlantis. 
     Stranded.  (Drabble)  BtVS/HP.
     1969.  (Drabble) BtVS/SG-1.
     A Quick Snatch and Grab.  (Drabble) BtVS/Atlantis.
     Reflexes.  (Drabble) BtVS/Atlantis.

Stargate: SG-1:
     Settling In.  What was it like for Jacob, in the early days?
     Do Not a Prison Make.  Her mind had been a trap for too long. Sarah, after Osiris.
     In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening (the Neighbors Remix).  What Jack fights for.  Post-season 8.
*   Pale Battalions.  Teal'c goes home after a glorious battle in Apophis' name.
     Consequences.  Broca AU.  It's sequel is New Lives.

Stargate: Atlantis:
     Arrows.  A mission gone wrong.  John/Teyla.
     Smooth.  Mensa-verse AU.  What Rod didn't notice at the time.
*    Adrift.  Misbegotten missing scene.  To fly a Wraith hive ship, you must be a Wraith.
     Scribbles.  What Kaleb Miller thinks about his wife's math and the events of McKay and Mrs. Miller. Note that Jeannie is the one who calls it 'scribbles.'

Batman Begins:
     Legacy.  After the funeral of Thomas and Martha Wayne, Alfred and Lucius have a quiet talk.
     A Night at the Manor.  Black-tie parties aren't really Jim Gordon's thing.

Battlestar Galactica:
*   Four Times Saul Tigh needed a drink (and one time he didn't).  Spoilers for Crossroads Part II
     Alone in the Silence.  Post-Resurrection Ship 2.  Lee Adama is a Cylon.

Buffy: the Vampire Slayer:
*    What a Father Is (the DNA Remix).  "I realize you’ve a dearth of male role models in your life, but a father is more than just an older man who happens to be around or who just happened to supply half your DNA." What the monks didn't tell about Dawn.

Star Wars:
*   Lessons Learned.  Anakin and Obi-Wan.  Third birthdays, in the temple creche and a slave ship.

Honor Harrington:
     A Picture of Happiness.  Honor and Paul visit home. Missing scene from Field of Dishonor.

Terminator:
     the end of the world as we know it.  Post-Terminator 3.  Their first night in the bunker, having to learn about each other.

What would they have called the equivalent of "Talented And Gifted" programs in the US in the late 1970's? You know, the special classes for the smart kids, particularly in math and science? How young would they be available, and what would have been the ratio of girls to boys? I know by the late 1990's, the TAG program (at least in Oregon) was a joke and did pretty much nothing in a lot of schools, mine included, but my Dad was in a program in the 1960's that started when he was in fourth or fifth grade and taught a lot of advanced stuff--math, geology, astronomy, etc.

Bottom line, I want to know what kind of programs would have been available to Sam Carter as a girl, assuming she was born in 1965. As an Air Force brat, she probably moved around a lot. How would that have affected her schooling? I'm assuming she would have gone to a regular school off-base even if she lived on-base some times.

Is there anyone who would be able to beta an Atlantis/Doctor Who crossover, and get it back to me tomorrow if I sent it to them today? It mostly needs help with plot and characterization, and a double check to see if I'm being too wordy.

It's for the Multiverse 5000, and it's due the 30th. I can get the first draft done, but it doesn't feel like it's "clicked," to me. I don't know if it just needs some polishing or if there's something that needs to be fixed. Or if I'm being a nervous writer panicking over a deadline.

I want a kitchen with a large island. Or a peninsula. Because cutting fabric for sewing is easier on the kitchen table than it is on the floor, but it's still hard on the back. Those extra few inches of height make so much difference.

Right now, I'm working on the bridesmaids dresses for my brother's wedding. Two cotton sundresses (it's going to be outside in Hawaii). I am so glad my future sister-in-law said "Just buy the extra yard and a half on the bolt" when we were getting the fabric. Because the skirts are very full, and each panel is to wide to fit on 45" fabric folded in half (the standard fabric width), so you're supposed to unfold it and double it up (so you can still cut two pieces at a time). Except ... they're obviously assuming you're working with a fabric that has no "up" or "down," because it doesn't work at all if you do. The way they tell you to arrange the pattern pieces on the fabric to cut it out usually sucks, but this was worse than usual. I needed actually quite a bit of the extra yard to make it work. Fortunately, it's cotton, which is so easy to work with. It just lies there flat and straight on the table, needs a bare minimum of pinning, it's great. The lining, on the other hand, is thin rayon (breathes better than polyester, and these are designed with Hawaii in mind, after all). Rayon lining is a bear to work with--it slides around on you if you so much as look at it cross-eyed. Even if you use lots of pins, it's going to find some way to slide around ... and it's real easy to have it slide on you when you're putting a pin in, and the more pins you put in the more chance you have of that. On the other hand, if you use too few pins, you risk a catastrophic slip when you're actually cutting.

It's an easy pattern to alter to fit--it's a halter top dress with a relatively high waist, so only the bust and waist measurements matter. One girl has a size-14 bust and size-16 waist (there's no size 15 in between), the other has a size-14 waist and is just under a size-14 bust. Very simple to make the adjustments. Pattern sizes are much different than ready-to-wear sizes--I'd say both girls are probably a six or an eight in ready-to-wear. See, stores have been slowly increasing sizes in ready-to-wear garments for decades, because playing to the vanity of the women trying on garments sells clothes. If you can say "Oh, I must have lost weight--I'm not really a fourteen, I'm a twelve!" you're more likely to buy it than if you say "yeah, still as fat as ever." (This is also why sizes can vary so dramatically from store to store and brand to brand--they haven't all been increasing at the same rate.) Pattern sizes, on the other hand, have stayed exactly the same. If you take out a pattern from 1950 and look at the measurements they give, a size-14 is the same as a size-14 today. This is actually a bit of a problem, for me--I didn't start buying ready-to-wear clothing for myself until college. I'm not a clotheshorse, never went shopping for fun; all my store-bought clothes came from birthdays and Christmas, and the only time I had to actually look at the sizes myself was when I was looking at patterns and fabric to make something for fun. So when I went away to college and started to buy my clothes myself, my first instinct was to grab twelves or fourteens, and then wonder in the dressing room why they didn't fit, before going "duh, sizes are different" and going out to find something my size. (First few times, it took like four trips out to the rack to grab the right size; I am so not joking.) I still don't shop for clothes much; I'm only now getting to the point where my first instinct is to grab the right size in ready-to-wear.

Parents of 12-year-old Vegan girl who has degenerative condition may face charges.

Anyone who allows their child to be harmed because of their philosophical (or religious!) beliefs should be charged--and found guilty. Now, usually when a child is harmed by their parents' beliefs, it's emotional or mental, and you can argue that the parents didn't know they were harming the child, emotions and the mind being relatively difficult to accurately measure/understand, particularly with people we're close to. (Might not be true, but you can at least argue it.) A diet that causes malnutrition severe enough to give a twelve year old the spine of an eighty-year old? THAT IS KIND OF OBVIOUS, AND TAKES A LONG TIME TO DEVELOP. Not to mention the incredible number of broken bones this kid has suffered, with various other problems due to malnutrition. There's no way they could not have known what they were doing to their daughter.

Adults can live on a vegan diet (no animal products at all, including eggs and dairy products) if they're very careful about it, although they still can suffer problems from malnutrition, depending on their health in general and what their eating habits are. But it is simply not possible to provide a child with all the nutrients he/she needs on a vegan diet. I mean, children have died from being put on a vegan diet too young. Granted, there are many children who don't have serious problems being on a vegan diet, but is that a risk you really want to take with a child's life and health? When adding in eggs and milk will drastically reduce the risk? You don't even have to feed the child meat! And if you decide to try to raise your child as a vegan, you darned sure better be on the lookout for any problems caused by malnutrition.

I had fun today. Grandma and I went up to Mill End Store in Portland to buy black wool for my Bunad, finally. A Bunad is the traditional Norwegian folk costume, worn for special occasions like Christmas and Syttende Mai (May 17, Norwegian Independence Day). I grew out of my last child version at least ten years ago, and we've been procrastinating on making the full adult version ever since. (The dress pattern is fairly simple. The embroidery is not.) I already have the bunadsølje (silver jewelry), bought when I spent a semester in Norway for a study abroad program in college. ( Here's what it's going to look like when it's done: )

By the way, did you know that two areas of Norway have officially registered tartans? One of them is the area my family was originally from. My last "child" bunad (I was a teen, but not quite fully grown) was in this style. ( Looked something like this: )

So Grandma and I had fun picking out the fabric for my bunad, and while we were at the store we found some cool patterns for fashionable dresses/jumpers/jackets/etc. that can be worn over a clerical collar blouse. Two of them we paid full price for, and the other five were in a box marked "two for $1.00," which was cool. Now, we're obviously not going to get all of them made before I have to go back to PA ... but I have a Cunning Plan. See, Grandma's style choices leave something to be desired. She likes to give clothes to people for Christmas and birthdays, but since she retired twenty years ago and doesn't get out to see what people wear these days, her choices have been, well, the less said the better. But! If she has a pattern, then all she has to do is get fabric to make it with, and that's within her abilities. She's an excellent seamstress, the sewing isn't the problem. She gets to give clothes (which she likes) and I get clothes I can actually wear. By the way, the icon used here is a picture of me taken as a senior in High School (taken by my parents, of course). The dress I'm wearing in it is one I made with Grandma. Our sewing together is a longstanding tradition.

Tomorrow, I go with my future sister-in-law and her bridesmaids to pick patterns and fabric for the bridesmaids dresses. It's going to be a destination wedding in Hawaii, so they're thinking sundresses instead of formal wear, and there are a couple fabric stores in Salem that would probably be fine for what we need, so I don't have to go up to Milwaukie twice in two days. Should be fun.

What keeps it from being an ideal summer day: I just got a notification from LJ that my extra icons are going to expire soon (which probably means my paid account is going to expire soon), and do I want to purchase more time. No, I don't, as I'm going to be switching to Dreamwidth Studios as soon as they're up and running, and I don't have money to pay for both LJ and Dreamwidth, and it's only going to be a month or two before I can switch over, probably. Which means a month or two with only six icons. Ah, well, I suspect I shall survive the deprivation.

We just checked out of Mt. Bachelor Village (in Central Oregon, just outside of Bend). Mom and Dad were here for a Professional Photographers of Oregon conference. Verdict: it's an okay place for a professional conference, but sucks as a resort because it's small and there's not much to do besides swim in the pool--they don't even have paths or trails to walk around the place, if you don't drive you have to walk on the road. If you want to go to a resort in Central Oregon, I'd suggest either Inn at the Seventh Mountain or Sun River instead of this place.

Most Annoying Thing: all the wide expanses of green lawn. People think Oregon is rainy, but that's only the coast and the Willamette Valley (the Northwest corner of the state). The rest of the state is one huge desert. You don't hear much about it because most of the people in Oregon live in the Valley or along the coast. (Although Bend is growing fast, and has been for a few years.) I do not consider myself an environmentalist, mostly because most "environmentalists" in Oregon are nuts, or at least they're the ones who seem to be in control of the environmentalist groups. (Don't get me started on the Spotted Owl idiocy or the problems in the way they're regulating the timber industry and all the public forests.) However, I am a huge fan of common sense, and of being good stewards to the creation that God has given us.

Huge green lawns in a desert is NOT GOOD STEWARDSHIP and it is also STUPID. (Mt. Bachelor Village has lots of huge green lawns.) The water could be put to much better use. The water table in the area has been decreasing at an alarming rate and everyone knows it because there are already too many people living here for sustainable water use at current levels of usage, and it's getting worse because of all the people moving into the area. They're going to be in a world of hurt in a few years because there aren't many big rivers in the Oregon desert, so once the water table is used up they're SOL. Bend is almost certainly too far south to be able to draw from the Columbia and its tributaries, and it's too far east to draw from the Willamette. (Not to mention they'd have to get the water over/through the Cascade Mountains, to draw from the Willamette.

Somebody's doing their thesis on fandom in general and fanfic specifically, and is asking fanfic writers and readers to take a survey so she can have some hard data. It doesn't take long.

Research shows that conservatives are nicer than liberals

There is plenty of data that shows that Right-wingers are happier, more generous to charities, less likely to commit suicide - and even hug their children more than those on the Left. ...

Those surveyed were asked: 'Is it your obligation to care for a seriously injured/ill spouse or parent, or should you give care only if you really want to?' Of those describing themselves as 'conservative', 71 per cent said it was. Only 46 per cent of those on the Left agreed.

To the question: 'Do you get happiness by putting someone else's happiness ahead of your own?', 55 per cent of those who said they were 'very conservative' said Yes, compared with 20 per cent of those who were 'very liberal'. ...

When asked by the World Values Survey whether parents should sacrifice their own well-being for those of their children, those on the Left were nearly twice as likely to say No.

'I'll have babies if you pay for them,' one Leftie blogger said on the social networking website yelp.com.

Billionaire Ted Turner, a self-described socialist, publicly regrets that he had five children. 'If I was doing it over again, I wouldn't have had that many,' he says. 'But I can't shoot them now they're here.' ...

Most surprising of all is reputable research showing those on the Left are more interested in money than Right-wingers....

This article comes from the UK, but it's based on research done in the US.

synecdochic worked for LJ for seven years, back from the very beginning. She knows what it takes to run it and what's working and what isn't with the way LJ is being run now, both as a business and as a piece of code. She's a very practical girl.

She's also an idealist. She wants to see this whole "social networking/blogging" thing done right. And you know what they say, if you want something done right, do it yourself.

So, she and some other programmers and business people are in the process of putting together Dreamwidth Studios. It's not going to be another LJ-clone; they're taking the LJ programming, updating and modernising it, and adapting it to fit their ideas and fix things that should be fixed. (For example, users will be able to distinguish between "people whose stuff I want to read" and "people who I trust to read my own personal stuff.") There will be no third-party advertising. They will let their users know what's going on, everything from "how much does it take to run this service, anyway?" to business concerns to programming work. They're integrating OpenID and RSS feeds into the core accounts so that you can actually have everything in one place.

And it's tentatively scheduled to be up and running sometime in August.

I am so excited.

Here's what synecdochic has to say: I believe there's a way to sustain an online community, a community made up of smart, intelligent, and creative people, that functions as a community, not as a cash cow. I believe that it's possible to build a site that serves its community, not its board of directors or its venture capitalists or its investors or its advertisers.

I believe it's possible for smart people, creative people, to build a service and understand the people using that service, because they're part of the userbase too. I believe it's possible for a small group of highly motivated, highly experienced people to build a service that accepts it's always going to be a niche market, and I believe it's possible to rock the everliving hell out of that niche.

We're going to give it our best damn shot.

Title: Through the Rift
Author: beatrice_otter
Fandom: Torchwood/Buffy: the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG
Characters: Buffy Summers, Jack Harkness and the Torchwood team.
Warnings: none
Spoilers: Brief references to early season 2 of Torchwood. Goes AU after “Adam.”
Word Count: 4,123
Written For: supfreud in sonic_hellmouth
Prompt: Buffy's Swan-Dive into the Portal in 'The Gift' spits her out into the rift in Cardiff and she's picked up by the Torchwood team.
Betad by: historianheidi
Summary: Somehow, she didn’t think this man would take “gangs on PCP” for an answer.

AN: Yes, I know there’s a difference between English accents and Welsh accents, and in fact many different kinds of accents in the British Isles, but Buffy doesn’t.

 

 

I'm going to be doing a theology blog for my home congregation and my intern congregation. I'd like it to be totally divorced from my personal/fandom journal, which probably means using a non-LJ service. What would people recommend?

Projects I am working on or would like to work on soon:

*starwarsficfest: I've written one ficlet, have started another, and have a list of nine others that particularly interest me--we'll see how many I get written. I'm not putting my name down on the list until they're done, because I'm the mod and I can do that.

*My Multiverse 5000 fic: it will be SGA/DW, and it's due June 31, and I have an idea but haven't started to write it yet.

*My post-Superman Returns fic with Supergirl. It's currently at 8k words, and is only about 1/3 done; it's the longest fic I've written in quite some time, and I would like to finish it since I haven't been able to finish any relatively long fics in a while.

*A BSG fic about Boomer based on the poem One Art by Elizabeth Bishop. That poem is just so very much her experience. It needs to percolate a bit more--I don't know what the plot would be, will have to think some more on how to bring the emotional resonance out--but it should be very cool once I get started on it.

*Going through my old list of WIPs and figuring out what to give up for adoption at fic_adoption. Basically, if you have old WIPs that you're never going to finish, you can post there and see if somebody wants to adopt them and finish them. I've got some that I know I'll never be coming back to (for instance the SG-1/JAG crossover that got scuttled because I'm not good at writing action and don't know enough about JAG to do it justice). If someone else wants them, they're welcome to it.

*The next chapter of White House Slayer. I don't have any idea what I'd write about, as it's more a series of episodes than one coherent story, but I'm itching to write some more with those characters.

And with 620 books accumulated by age 25, I think I'm well on my way, yes? Alas, jedibuttercup has been pushed to seventh on my "Members with your books" list. (This would be due to my rapid accumulation of theological works, which then makes my SF/F books a smaller part of my collection.)

Anyway, I'm also on LibraryThing's Early Reviewers list, where you can request certain books before they come out and if you're lucky you'll get a copy. If you write a review of it, your odds of getting more Early Reviewer books in the future are greatly increased. This month I snagged my first Early Reviewer book:

Bikeman, by Thomas Flynn, is an epic poem about 9/11. Now, before you say "Epic poem? sounds boring" please stop and listen for a minute. This is not your grandmother's epic poem. It's a first-person monologue of Flynn's experiences at Ground Zero. It's relatively short (only 73 pages) and quite readable. It's the kind of thing you can devour in an hour.

We did not live through it,
we just did not die.

So much poetry of the 20th Century is either overly-academic and esoteric almost to the point of incomprehensibility, or saccharine drivel. Bikeman by Thomas F. Flynn is neither. The imagery is poetic and poignant while still being accessible. There are some literary references I would not expect the average American to get, but not many of them.

Although Bikeman records the planes hitting the building and people jumping and such, the majority of it is Flynn's experience after the first tower has collapsed, moving through a grim, dust-smothered world, trying to escape the clouds of destruction. This is what sets the tone for the whole poem, so it's a much different focus than for those of us who watched it on television who were wondering if there were plains heading for the capitol and seeing the footage of the planes hitting the towers over and over again. Bikeman does not stir the emotions to such epic heights as the events of that day, but it does capture the disbelief and surreality. It is a quieter kind of passion, restrained, not quite able to believe what is happening. I think it suits the subject well; I don't see how an attempt to fully capture the horror could come off as anything but overwrought.

I can't judge the poem's artistic merit; It's been too long since my college poetry classes, and I never much cared for epics or modern poetry, so I don't have much to compare it to literarily. But I think it's a shame that poetry today requires college classes to teach you how to read and appreciate it. What I liked most about Bikeman is that I could read it and enjoy it without needing to fall back on old half-remembered lit coursework.

legomymalfoy wins!

The results are interesting, and tell me something about fandom in general, on LJ in particular, and also something about dirty politics. First, you have to understand how the election worked: to win, a candidate needed more than 50% of the vote. If no one got a majority, the lowest count candidate was eliminated, and the second choice for his/her supporters was counted, instead. This process continues until a candidate has more than 50% of the vote. This is called an instant run-off system; it's the system of voting used in some countries. Since you get only three choices, if those three choices aren't very popular, well, your candidates might not make it far, in which case you don't have a say in further run-offs ... but you still got three chances to have a say, which is more than you get in the type of election Americans are used to, in which case if you don't vote for the candidate the majority of people in your area vote for, your vote doesn't matter. There is no perfect system of voting. Every one has both drawbacks and advantages.

In this election, it was clear that the three main candidates endorsed by fandom were top contenders, from the beginning; by the time round 19 of eliminations came around, everyone had been eliminated except legomymalfoy, rm, and vicy (the three main fandom candidates) and jameth, a candidate who got a large fraction of his vote for attacking fandom in general and legomymalfoy in particular.* It took 21 eliminations to get to a point where any one candidate had a clear majority. By that point, the only two candidates remaining were jameth and legomymalfoy. From round 1 to round 21, jameth picked up 1,330 votes as a second or third choice candidate for people whose first or second choice were eliminated. legomymalfoy picked up 3187. What this means is that there were some people who liked somebody else more than jameth, but still liked him enough to put him in their top three. legomymalfoy had three times that many people who liked her as their second or third candidate. Basically, while Jameth's tactics attracted people who were willing to make him their top candidate, they weren't very successful attracting people who might put him second or third. Either you liked him or you hated him, which is not a good strategy for a run-off type election, which may very well swing (as in this case) on people's second or third choices. It is, however, pretty predictable when you run a negative campaign.

*(An example of jameth's tactics: legomymalfoy received a death threat over the election process. LJ notified all the candidates; one chose to back out. This was publically announced, but not who had received the death threat; it was assumed that the guy who dropped out was the one, and he encouraged that idea. jameth hung around in the LJ of the guy who dropped out, talking trash about fandom and saying how it was probably a fan who wanted to ensure legomymalfoy won. When legomymalfoy was the one who received the threat! Gah.)

Also, let's take a look at the reactions to the election results: a lot of people are saying things like "Shenanigans!" and "OMG! Lots of people's votes didn't count!" (when the election happened exactly the way LJ said it would in all their explanations). This is the way a run-off election works, people! I don't particularly like LJ's current management, and they have a bad habit of trying to ignore their users and obfuscate to keep us in the dark ... but that's not what happened this time. Many of the people who are complaining are also posting obscene pictures (so mature, there, folks) and things like "we have been snape-raped!" And this is the other predictable result of a negative campaign: when it's over, everyone is polarized and mistrustful and hate-filled. Which, if your goals are long-term enough to include what happens after the election, is a bad thing. (I realize that I contributed to the negativity with my post about jameth--but that's another thing about negative campaigns: once one side starts, the other feels pressured to respond in kind and things start a downward spiral.)

Observations about fandom: we seemed to be by far the largest voting bloc, judging both by the initial tally and by watching the run-off process work. This is surprising in some ways, not so much in others. It's surprising because "fandom" is really a large, amorphous group composed of thousands of smaller groups within, which may or may not talk to each other on a regular basis. In fact, some of which are actively quite hostile to each other. Many fandoms, particularly the larger ones, will have large groups within them that hate each other's guts, or at least try to act like it when they're forced into proximity to one another. So coming together to come up with a slate of three candidates almost everyone could agree on? Yeah. That's not something you see every day.

Why fandom coming together as a bloc for voting purposes is not surprising: we're used to being ignore and belittled by non-fans. I'm lucky, myself; my family thinks my participation in fandom is an interesting hobby, for the most part, instead of as some weird thing that proves I'm nuts and that I can't handle the real world. Unless you come from a fanish family or marry a fellow fan, the latter reaction is a lot more common. It doesn't matter what segment of fandom you're in; that's the common reaction to fannishness. When it's not like we put any more time and effort into being fannish than a diehard fan of a sports team puts into being a fan of that sports team. But even if you're lucky like me, and your family is supportive, fandom as a whole still gets belittled and discriminated against all the time. Good examples being everything from LJ's recent history to Shatner's famous "Get a life!" This inspires a kind of bunker mentality; we may have some really nasty infighting under normal circumstances, but we'll come together if there's a hint of a threat. (Whether we'll overcome our inner divisions to be able to actually accomplish something can be another matter, but at least we'll try.) So for this election process, everyone in fandom on LJ (in all its myriad forms) knew what the issues were, which candidates were likely to be supportive and which were likely to be hostile to us, and which were active fans themselves. And after some debate among ourselves, a slate of candidates were selected as THE candidates that fandom was going to throw its weight behind.

And that's the story on how legomymalfoy won the election.

For those of you who don't know, my parents are professional photographers (two of the best in Oregon). Each year, their studio Haugen's Galleri has a Children's Contest. There are two awards, the Artistic Merit (which is judged by various other professional photographers), and the People's Choice, which goes to the photograph that raises the most amount of money for charity. There are two charities; Operation Back-pack (which buys school supplies for needy children) and the Boys and Girls Club of Corvallis, OR. To see the photographs or vote, go here. That will bring up a slide show of the photographs. To vote, click on the link called 2008 Children's Contest. That will bring up a page with thumbnails of all the images. When you click on an image, it'll go to an order page for that image, and in the order drop-down box, there are various levels of donation. Select your level of donation and click "Add to Cart."

(By the way, my default icon comes from one of the Senior Portraits they took for me my senior year of high school.)

I spent much of my free time last semester watching a friend's DVDs of New School Who, and a sampling of her Old School Who (Tom Baker era), while waiting for this season's Doctor Who to start in America. I avoided most spoilers, but not Lizbee's meta post on the difference between the old-school Doctor and Nine/Ten. Basically, it boils down to the fact that the Doctor is deeply emotionally scarrred by the destruction of Gallifrey and his role in it, and doesn't believe that he deserves a second chance--and because he doesn't think he deserves a second chance, can't quite make himself believe that others do, either, making him a much harder character, and more prone to manipulate and use others. Not always, but often enough to be a serious problem. lizbee thinks Donna is good for the Doctor because she's not going to let him get away with that kind of thing, and is far more proactive about that than either Rose or Martha were, and when combined with the fact that he's had a little more time to heal than he has since the first time we saw Nine, he's actually starting to go back to something closer to what he used to be like. Having now seen the first few episodes of this season, I think lizbee's got some good insights here (although her knowledge of Old School Who is far superior to mine, so I can't judge that portion of her argument).

This, then, combines with something else I'd been thinking about as I re-watched the DVDs, namely that awesomeness that is Human Nature/Family of Blood. In Human psychology at least, a little temporary amnesia or denial can actually be a good thing, because it gives the mind time to put distance between a traumatic event and process it subconsciously and heal without having to DEAL WITH IT consciously. Like any defense mechanism, it's good in the short term but can be destructive when taken too far. Let's apply this to the Doctor: he's already trying denial as a defense mechanism (not talking about the fact that HIS ENTIRE WORLD AND ALL ITS PEOPLE ARE GONE unless the world is coming to an end counts, I think--and just watch his face when he's avoiding talking about it). Let's also realize we're dealing with the fact that Time Lords live very long lives, and what would seem like a long time to engage a defense mechanism to us probably feels very short to them.

So here we have the Doctor, as a human, not consciously remembering his past but still dreaming it, which means his subconscious is still processing it. He's happy and content, which he hasn't been since before his people were destroyed, at least. He's living in a stratified, stable society ruled by tradition (as Gallifrey was) that still is about to go through a lot of changes (and he likes that sort of thing), so it's about the perfect environment for balancing homesickness for a world that no longer exists with, you know, the fact that he couldn't stand to actually live there when it did exist. He's got the beginnings of a family, so he wouldn't be alone. He's got a job he enjoys--no one pontificates as much as the Doctor does who doesn't like teaching, at least the idea of it. If he'd used the Chameleon Arch again after dealing with the Family of Blood, he would have had a human-span life with Joan, a quiet life. No great joys and triumphs ... but no great tragedies, either. Just the thing to let him heal a little.

Then all you have to do is have Martha look up his obituary in the papers and use the Tardis to go back in time to the day before. She gives him the pocket watch and he's the Doctor again, except one who's had a long time to lay quietly and rest. Run the obituary the next day, and off we go again. (The fact that I loved Joan and wanted to see more of her has nothing to do with this idea, nothing, I tell you. Or that I would love to see the Doctor try and extricate himself after several decades of a human life, and see him deal with those kids we saw in his vision, whether or not they were fully human or regenerated into Time Lords eventually.) I think that if HN/FoB had happened after the Master arc, the Doctor might have chosen something like this, or at least been more likely to.

I doubt I'll ever write this idea, but it's a fun one to contemplate. I have this scene where he's convinced some of his family to take a trip in the Tardis with him to the early 21st Century to drop Martha off (in my AU timeline for this, HN happens right after Last of the Time Lords, and she didn't say she wanted out until after HN/FoB). Anyway, so they're in London and he's buying cell phones so his human family can call him if they need him, and Jack Harkness comes up behind him and swings him into a kiss by way of a hello. And the Doctor's family, coming from the mid-20th century (maybe ca. 1950/1960, if we take the vision as a clue to when human!Doctor dies?) is SHOCKED, and the Doctor doesn't get why, and then he says something about how he just doesn't understand humans--they don't care that he spent forty years married to someone who wasn't even a member of his own species, but snogging someone of the same gender throws them?!? This then requires him to introduce Jack to his family, which shocks Jack (Jack is so hard to shock that it amuses me to think up things that actually would).

Okay, I finally saw Iron Man. Nice flick, worth the price of admission, although I can already tell I'm not going to be fannish about it (what can I say, I'm a DC girl). Anyone who stayed through the credits knows exactly what movie they're making next. Tony was well played, and so was Pepper; Rhodey was under-utilized. While I can only imagine that the Iron Man fandom is going to go wild with Tony/Pepper, I'd like to see a well-written Pepper/Coulson (the SHIELD agent). They had some chemistry, and as the two people trying to ride herd on/manage Stark (because Lord knows he needs a manager), I can see lots of commiseration in their future.

No, not national, LJ advisory board. Normally, I'd stay out of it, but since one of the leading candidate's primary appeal so far is that he doesn't want a "lame ass ... fandom dork" to win, I'm throwing in my two cents. It seems to me that having a person on the advisory board who clearly and publically dislikes and is scornful of a large percentage of the user base is a Bad Thing. And I would think it was bad regardless of whether or not

A few days ago, there was a flurry of discussion in [candidate] jameth's journal, trying to figure out how they could get more votes. brendan (of ohnotheydidnt, which has at least 50,000 members) was brought up. Jameth asked "omg how can we get ontd," qweerdo went to Brenden's friends only journal and begged, and Brenden came through.

Yesterday, he posted a very strong, very cyber-loud endorsement, and between 7:00pm (when that was posted) and one o'clock in the morning, Jameth went from 17% of the vote to 20.4% (growing rapidly) of the vote because Brenden made sure they know that "SOME LAME ASS HARRY POTTER FANDOM DORK IS IN THE LEAD." He also seems to object to the fact that legomymalfoy is a voluntary member of LJ's Abuse Prevention Team, has been one of their main members for years, and has thereby dedicated many, many unpaid hours to the task of keeping LJ running and on an even keel, and thus knows at least something about every nook and cranny of LJ, not just the one(s) she is a member of. (Which makes her the single most qualified candidate, particularly as she's said from the beginning that the thing that makes LJ great is the community, regardless of what the community is formed around, and that she won't be pushing the agenda of any one of those communities on LJ--including fandom!--above another community's agenda.)

icarusancalion has compiled a comprehensive list of ways in which Jameth has based his campaign upon attacking fandom's place on livejournal in this post. He has shown that he has no respect for fandom as a voting body, does not understand the issues fandom is facing in this election, and is willing to play up negative fandom stereotyping in order to gain votes.

Please CAST YOUR VOTE for someone other than this dude, if you haven't already voted. The list of candidates is here, with links to each candidate's platform.

For those of you in fandom, here are the fandom candidates: legomymalfoy, rm, or vichan. More info on all three found here. (Why, yes, the idea is to vote as a bloc, so that we have a chance of getting someone who understands our issues. This is particularly important given the way LJ has proved repeatedly over the last year that they don't care about fandom and are perfectly ready to toss us to the wolves on no provocation.)

DO NOT put the same person in all three spaces--this will cause your vote to be thrown out!

As you know, I am running starwarsficfest this July. Prompts are now available for claiming. Now, I know most of the people on my flist aren't really Star Wars fans; myself, I'm not really fannish about Star Wars, either. But it was my first great fannish love, and I remember it fondly and I'll bet a lot of you out there do too. You don't have to be fannish about Star Wars to participate; you don't have to be familiar with any of the Extended Universe books, comics, or games. There's no pressure (it's not an exchange, no penalties for dropping out.) There are a wide variety of prompts available, from every era and genre of Star Wars imaginable, and a lot of them look really cool. Hope to see some of you there!

(And if you know anybody who might be interested, send 'em on in.)