For my birthday this past weekend, I got the flu. Now I am achey and tired and cranky and fever-and-chills-y and hard-to-focus-y and I can't read fic and I screwed up the decreases in my knitting like twelve times yesterday because I couldn't count.

So I thought it was time to post a guessing-fannish-stuff meme!

Some months ago, aria posted a bunch of post secret-style secrets from the POV of various characters, and asked people to guess who wrote which secret. At the time I thought it was a great idea, and wanted to turn it into a meme (again), but then it took me a long time to make any secrets, and also to come up with secrets, and anyway I'm bad at getting around to posting things, so I just stuck them over in posts-to-maybe-make-someday. But today is clearly a good day for it!

( Behind the cut: forty-some secrets by characters from twenty-some fandoms; includes text descriptions )

( One NSFW secret is here, under a separate cut )

( I'd love to play in your versions, too! )

ETA: There are two secrets left unguessed (counting the ones where someone made an awesome guess, but nobody guessed what I'd originally intended): #7 and 41. So I thought I'd narrow down the fandoms somewhat; the remaining ones come from: Stargate SG-1 and Nintendo video games.

Omg there are so many vids!

I have watched several of them already, mostly in the genres of "scifi" "queer film" and "films with people of color." Here are some that I particularly liked:

O Death, Book of Eli. I haven't seen the movie at all -- basically all I know about it is that it's a post-apocalypse -- but wow, this vid is GORGEOUS. And it really makes clever use of the quiet movement in the song, so that it ends up using these neat restrained rhythms. Plus did I mention the part where it's gorgeous?

After All, Sarah Jane Adventures. This totally made me tear up a little. It's a Sarah Jane vid about her whole life, so there's some Old Who and some New Who and a whole bunch of SJA and it is basically everything I want in a vid about Sarah Jane. <3

Who Needs Enemies, ST: DS9. This is really interesting and pretty, and I'm not really sure I got the whole story in it, but the Bashir + Sloan + Garak, and the performance and watching-your-own-life and spy stuff, is all really deftly handled. And dense. Definitely dense. It makes me wish I remembered more about those plots.

End of the World, Life After People. It's not quite my genre, but it's sort of a (post-)apocalypse vid regardless. And it does really cool things with time-lapse and tight cutting and with collapse and destruction. I really enjoyed it. (Note: rotting food, maggots, insects, etc.)

Beat Control, Lilo and Stitch. It's like pure joy! With lots of dancing and hugs and family!

The Humbling River, Red Cliff. I really enjoyed the vid -- it's beautiful, and I like the editing a lot, and like the character-focuses, and I <3 Zhuge Liang like whoah. But I'm not a fan of the song choice, so I end up feeling a little torn about it.

Anywhere On This Road, Jericho. I have never seen the show at all, so I'm sure I'm missing a ton of layers in this vid -- I actually just clicked on it because I like the singer (Lhasa de Sela). And wow, it's a really great post-apocalypse vid, and the song gives it this feeling of inevitability and tension at the same time. Very cool.

Now I will go poke at more festivids! Or do some knitting, one of those two things.

1. Why has it been fifty-five degrees (13* C) out and raining for most of the last week?

I turned the heat off at least a month ago, but it keeps getting down to the low forties at night and then only hitting 55 or so during the day, so the house is pretty chilly. To the point that I'm wearing my winter socks and fleece and drinking hot tea. And whining. Brrrrr. But listen, June, even if you've decided to be spring instead of summer, I'm not turning the heat back on. (I did, however, make cookies to heat up the place.)

Also, the first tomatoes were looking nearly-done a week ago, but because of the cool weather I've had no tasty tomatoes -- the tomato plants are going "what is this?" Instead I've had to weed a lot, which is much less fun.

Plus the probably-upstairs-neighbors who have been pretending to "compost" dumped more "compost" in the yard, so I gave up on polite and sicced the property management company on them. Gratifyingly, the person who took my call was like "how many times has it happened? what, seriously?"

2. I wish dreamwidth had a jabber/xmpp service. I have made many new friends here, but finding everyone's gtalk or lj talk names and adding them in manually is a pain in the ass, and also requires that I remember to do it.

3. In a week or so I have an appointment with a physiatrist (me to doctor on getting this referral: oh come on, now you're just making doctors up!) who is supposed to consult regarding hand orthotics and PT. Which is really exciting! Especially because I've been waiting to see hir for like four months. And maybe I'll get something better or more useful than my current tape-knuckles-as-they-act-up approach, which a) requires waiting until they've acted up and b) involves a lot of tape.

4. I am always amused when I'm icing something and heating something else. (Currently, heating the neck, icing the wrist.)

5. When I came home today, a dude biked up the driveway to follow me to the door of my apartment -- which is set back from the street -- and said "do you live here?" And when I just sort of blinked, he said "hey, what's your name? what do you do?" To which I said "I don't have time to talk right now" and shut and locked the door behind me. (Actually I said I was sorry first, because I never do manage not to apologize.) But, just, what a great illustration of the ways in which people demand information from people with less power/privelege sometimes, and the way in which that's creepy. And I bet if I'd tried to call him on it, he would've done the "I was just trying to be friendly and make conversation!" NARGH. As if being followed to my door isn't a potentially-threatening intrusion into my space.

I was linked to an essay on this somewhere -- though of course I can't find it now -- that talked about how the kinds of "small talk" that are common in public space translate to "give me information that will allow me to track you down." (ETA: found by livrelibre! It's brigid's post men and women in public spaces.)

6. Mythbusters! I have been watching it! Last week's episode -- Fireball Stun Gun -- was massively meta, because ( Mythbusters spoilers )

7. Doctor Who! I am incredibly behind on it. *facepalm* I just now watched The Hungry Earth, and I should probably watch the rest of the two-parter, but meh. I think I will watch some Avatar instead.

I was googling for images for something else last night when I came upon the following information: MYTHBUSTERS IS GOING TO TEST THE GORN CANNON FROM STAR TREK TOS. It totally deserves the allcaps, because this is going to be awesome. A) Kirk makes his own gunpowder and fires diamonds and b) Grant bought himself a Star Trek shirt. Yes. The build team is going to test it, and so Grant bought a TOS science-officer shirt and some Vulcan ear extension things and a communicator and a tribble and a yellow shirt for Tory and a red shirt for Buster. And then he took pictures of it all! For reals!

SO, as a consequence, I made an icon, because what can you do when faced with that much concentrated awesome?





And, while I'm posting icons, I thought I'd include some random ones I made in the last few days or found in my icon-making folder. ( Three more Mythbusters, three Dead Zone, two Sentinel, three of Martha Jones being awesome, one SG-1, one Batman comics, and a whole bunch of video game icons )

... this is my new subject of lust.

Yes, y'all, that is a robotic Dalek jack-o-lantern. ROBOTIC. It moves. It's remote controlled. It rotates its head! You can see it on youtube! All it really needs now is to be able to say "exterminate."

Now, if only I could get my hands on the right settings for a ring modulator, I could do a Dalek halloween with robotic jack-o-lantern AND a Dalek Christmas with a whole album of Daleks creepily singing "Joy to the World." Which was last years' holiday dream for the Daleks. (Come on! Joy to the World! It would be awesome! I would so do it if I had the right settings for a ring modulator. Also, I would need a volunteer chorus. Also, maybe somebody would do some cover art with Daleks in the sky, all sparkly, for "Angels We Have Heard on High.")

... oddly, I feel like I have to post this using my Doctor Who holiday icon, because, hello, Doctor Who plus holiday! But it's Christmasy. But it's a Doctor Who holiday icon. I'm so torn!

( coffee )

***

( travel to California )

1. Okay, so someone has done a Dalek Christmas carol. The Go Go's recorded "I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With a Dalek." Only it's not at all what I'm thinking of -- the Dalek says things like "I'd like some more plum pudding." I don't want "I'd like some more plum pudding" and "we'll hug under the Christmas tree" and the human chorus going "Merry Chwithmas." (Tonstant weader thwowed up.)

No. I want ominous. I want "Joy to the World" to be the scariest (funniest) damn thing you've ever heard. I want creepy. This is not it.

2. wiccanslyr did a SGA vid. McKay. To "White and Nerdy." It's at youtube here or available for download here.

3. I never really manage to read Yuletide. It's cool and fabulous but, dude, 1000+ stories? Nonetheless, I have enjoyed:

Lives by Breaking, a Pevensies-at-the-end-of-Wardrobe story.

Further Up and Further In, an Aslan's country story.

Changelings, a story in the Finder/Bordertown universe (Emma Bull). It's a happy story, but Tinker as a young elf made me sniffle.

Happiness is Fleeting, a Penny Arcade story that is almost exactly like a comic. Gabe! Tycho! Monkeys!

Of Mice and Myth, a creepy little HHGttG/Teatime story. With mice. Fantabulous.

The Long Con, a Vorkosiganverse story. Oh, Byerly! There should be more stories about By. And Ivan. And Alys throwing up her hands.

A Maze of Twisty Passages, All Alike, a Vorkosiganverse story. GREGOR. Gregor and Ivan. Go read it now.

Wag the Duck. Bloom County. Manages to get across the total weirdness of the strip in prose form. Also, it is a BLOOM COUNTY story. With lines like "In the last election, he had been opposed by a sincere but politically inexperienced ficus plant." And Binkley wakes his dad up in the middle of the night to ask if Madonna will ever be in a good movie.

Pop Life because it's a War for the Oaks story. Eddie and the Fey, one year later.

Best headline EVER: "Pants found in ravine." Way to make the readers wtf, Sf Chronicle!

( picture behind the cut: the bad wolf really is everywhere )

( Spoilers for SGA 3x13 Irresponsible )

Also, my new icon involves evil clockwork Santas peering at the TARDIS. Who can possibly resist evil clockwork Santas?