Okay, Merlin fans have just lived through a two-part episode in which Uther was married to a troll.

There were a lot of things to love about the second half of this episode--Merlin's smile, Arthur defying his father to save Merlin's life, the beginning to the split between Uther and Arthur, Arthur starting to come into his own as a GROWNUP BOY and the king we all knew we'd come to love some day, instead of spoiled Prince Pratface, did I mention Merlin's smile...

Despite that, I can honestly say that was the worst 84 minutes of television I've ever watched, and if I hadn't been watching it with someone, I might have got through part 1, but no way in hell would I have made it to the OMG HUGGING WTF WAS THAT at the end of part 2.

The "humor" in this episode was unspeakably horrible--setting aside that it just wasn't funny--fart jokes are not, in fact, the height of wit--it was so misogynistic that I actually checked to see if kripke had been involved with this episode (sadly, no). Fat people are dirty! Ugly women have to trick men into marrying them! Rape is hilarious, for a girl or a boy! If she's not beautiful, she's an "it!"

Toward the end of the cringefest, I realised what it reminded me of--Shallow Hal--and that might be why I hated it so much, instead of just being annoyed that yet another show felt the need to spend an hour and a half telling me how I am not human. Because when the girls at work wanted me to watch Shallow Hal with them, I said, "Watch Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow make fun of fat people for an hour and a half. Wow, uh, thanks, but no thanks?" and I was assured that this movie was, in fact, the opposite of that.

It is not. Shallow Hal is about fat acceptance like Joss Whedon is about feminism. Except worse.

And I wouldn't have been surprised at this coming from Supernatural. In fact, if we had this exact same episode next week it wouldn't stand out at all. But I wasn't expecting it from Merlin, and I feel like I got a little blindsided by that.

1. An art! By way of Doola, who sends me all manner of delicious things and for which I repay her with Jensen/Harley slash: Facilis Descensus Averno, G, Castiel, by acerbus_instar.

I will tell you honestly that I have been largely "MEH" about SPN art, with a couple of exceptions--Pondy did a couple of good pieces (although tends strongly toward the Wincest--which does not make her work less good, just less to my taste), obviously there's Pentapus's Castiel (SEE ICON I WANT TO PUT HIM IN MY POCKETS) but mostly, if there's great stuff out there, I haven't seen it*. Also, I hate the color orange.

Bearing both of those in mind: this Castiel piece is my new desktop background. I find it compelling.

2. A beta! Any takers for a little bit of Sam POV gen, angsting about Castiel and Dean and Winchester Trust Issues? It's about 500 words right now and will probably not end up longer than 1000. Just need someone to see if it's a) coherent and b) not overtly in contradiction to canon.



*If you know of great SPN art out there that I haven't seen? OMFG LINK ME ALREADY.

You see that face Castiel is making in my icon? I've been making that face since about 8:30 tonight (which is when we sat down to watch).

( Cut for spoilers and fisting. )

Re: next week: Listen, kripke, I was first in line to defend your use of fangirls in The Monster At The End Of This Book, but you are getting carried away, I think. You're on notice. First, it is unseemly to mock the people you make your living off of (gently, and with love, I will accept, but be careful, I fear you go too far). Secondly, don't be Stephen King. Don't get all carried away with how meta and brilliant and OMG FOURTH WALLBUSTIN' you are and ruin your reasonably compelling story.

Shootings at Fort Hood.

What the hell.

Found out yesterday morning that Second Chance, a "no-kill" non-profit shelter run by CenTex Humane Society, had a fire this weekend, and over 100 animals died. Details are sparse but I'm pretty sure I don't need to know any more than that.

Fire is my own particular special horror; I have a quiet, creeping fear of one day coming home and finding my house gone and my animals suffocated or burned to death. I have seen animals that were pulled from house fires and I can tell you it is not how I would want to go.

Animal shelters are my other own particular special horror, right up there with nursing homes. Places we store the unwanted & unloved because nobody can be bothered with them. They're basically museums for humanity's failings.

Needless to say the thought of hundreds of animals dying in cages, terrified and alone, will be haunting me for some time.

How you can help.

The thing is, the episode was totally ageist, I agree, and there was no Castiel at all, AT ALL, which is a wholly unacceptable level of Castiel to have, btw, none: not okay, and I am not sure that they got the whole disability thing right, but at least they failed FAR less than I expected them to, but this: this must be said.

Dean Winchester, I love you. I love you and your desperate, easy, open love for your family, and your willingness to say "Screw pride, fuck being right, forget machismo: I love you and you matter to me and I need you." I don't know how, being brought up by Bobby and John Winchester, you EVER learned to be that way, but I love it, whole-heartedly and unashamedly.

I love fandom.

And one of my favorite things about fandom is threads like this one. (For context: In the entry, lamardeuse recs chibirhm's fic and says, "this is apparently the writer's first foray into fanfic, to which I say WHERE HAS SHE BEEN ALL MY LIFE?")

Setting aside the wank, the one-uppery, the fail of every flavor, the line-crossing, and the unending stupid, at the end of the day, fandom brings together a bunch of people who've always been told they weren't quite right, and encourages them to sit around telling each other (sincerely) how totally awesome they are.

It bears noting that there are easily half a dozen people on my flist of whom I have been, at one time or another, in fannish awe of the "omg she knows my name" variety, and I have met nearly all of them, and found them to be generally fantastic people who are a little off and a lot nerdy and in short, exactly as awesome (and exactly as intimidating) as all my other friends.

Title: Lucky Knickers Will Get You Everywhere.
Authors: hija_paloma and franticsga
Rating: (here our authors disagree: they wouldn't show this on HBO, so I give it an NC-17.)
Disclaimer: I'm sure there's a happy, wonderful universe where this fic has occurred and might occur again, but it is not this one.
Notes: Yeah, what she said. This was written ages ago, and I blame the entire thing on Fellow Fangirl Bradley James for being no less ridiculous than this story.
Description: "That's it, then? No other burning questions you've been dying to ask about my sex life, you pervert?"
Yes, Bradley thinks, and says, "No." I need to know what else you do, what else you like, and if you think maybe you could like it with me. "I think that's everything for now."

It occurs to me, I have to specify here: this is Merlin RPS.

Secretary of State Clinton recently had an article published in The Guardian about food security, in which she said, "Consider the world's typical small farmer. She..."

And I thought, "Oh, huh."

Because even though I grew up on a farm, I still--like, apparently, most everybody in America--think of farmers as men. Women, as we know, are farmers' wives.

Except most of the farmers in the world are women.

Shakesville has a photo post of farmers the world around: gorgeous pictures.

(One not-so-small quibble: all of the farmers from the US--and England, Ireland, Scotland, & Wales--are white. Being as it's Shakesville, I'm confident this was an issue of available photos and not selection bias, but it still bears mentioning.) Reading for comprehension fail, carry on.

In the good way, and the bad way. But mostly the good way, which engenders another WOW.

( Minor issues, each with a But... Spoilery for 505, Fallen Idol. )

...you know, it's kind of sad that I've gotten to the point where misogyny/race issues on this show can be categorized as minor. I mean, all things relative and all, but geez, guys.

With all that out of the way:

Y'all, can we talk about how AWESOME Dean Winchester is? Can we? Because he is. And I'm gonna.

( Cut for spoilers, length, and gushing. )

Is Leverage on hiatus or something?

I'm not watching it. It's just, you know. I ran out of other shows to get caught up on (except Psych and Eureka, which I am saving) and I don't feel like rewatching Bones yet and I just want to know what happens.

But not with Nate and Sophie, I could give a crap about Nate. Sophie's awesome, don't get me wrong, but the thing is, she's mostly awesome because she has NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in Nate's bullshit, and I know that is going to be changing soon, because I've seen television before.

It's just been really interesting to watch the relationships between Hardison, Elliott, and Parker develop, especially as Mom & Dad got all caught up in their bullshit drama-llamaing and the kids were left to fend for themselves.

SHUT UP OKAY WHATEVER DON'T YOU JUDGE ME.

In other news, to absolutely nobody's surprise, I went running--not crawling, but flat-out arms-wide OMG YOU'RE BACK YOU'RE BACK running--back to Supernatural. In my defense, he fixed the Big Ugly--and he fixed Castiel--and he fixed Dean--and then he made Misha Collins say "orgy."

Like I ever had a chance of resisting that shit.

Phaedra Starling has a guest post up at Shapely Prose that I think is very much worth reading. It's about sexual assault, so it might be triggering for some people.

Long title with umlaut will not be reproduced here, but there's your link :)

In short, no, women are not hysterical and paranoid for treating strange men as potential rapists. Even if they treat all strange men that way. And I can prove it with math.

In other news, how is it getting hotter now that the sun's been down for six hours or so? WTF, Texas, you are broken.

Hands up everyone who wanted to see Castiel turn into yet another bitch-hating, woman-scorning kripke clone a la Dean Winchester?

...yeah, me neither.

Congratulations, kripke, you have now officially destroyed everything I didn't hate about your show.

Note to Misha Collins: We talked about this, remember, after Karla? You simply cannot be that hungry. And if you are, call me. I will totally float you a loan until you can get a non-degrading job.

Seriously, there is a very good chance this will be my last episode. Augh. AUGH.

Just wow.

Now you can PAY LJ for the privilege of running ads on your journal!

Welcome to Web 2.stupid.

In not-unrelated news, this counts as my next post in the "why you should probably consider switching to Dreamwidth already" series.

Advertising on social networking sites: does it work? Is it a viable business model?

No. I heard the discussion associated with this article on NPR when it first aired and was sitting in the parking lot where I'd pulled over, nodding and thinking, "Yes. Yes, seriously, that." At the time, I had no idea who Denise Paolucci was, but I knew that ads on LJ are about as effective as spam e-mail. Who even sees those things, between Firefox and ad-blocker software? And who the hell clicks through?

Basically, nobody.

Right now, Dreamwidth is counting on account sales to support the site financially, and they're bringing in enough revenue to cover operating costs. As the site grows, that revenue will need to increase--as it is, right now, DW is still in "labor of love" territory--and I don't know how that will happen. But I know it won't be through advertising.

The definition of insanity as "repeating the same behavior and expecting different results" is probably familiar to most of you, and that is what most user-generated-content sites are doing--turning to advertising to increase revenue.

I submit to you that advertising on such sites is very low in profitability and high in risk of alienating users--especially new users, whose first impression of a site should not be a thousand flashing "HIT THE MONKEY AND WIN A CAR" banners.

The Dreamwidth team may not have found The Answer to Web 2.0 profitability yet, but at least they're looking.

And at least they're not asking us to pay for an ad-supported account.

p.s. Yes, I still have a fistful of invite codes. You want 'em, you got 'em. Also, hat tip to umbo for the heads up, because somehow I missed that announcement in LJ's nine million news/info communities, but that is a rant for my next "Why Dreamwidth" post.

JESUS CHRIST GRANDPA WHAT DID YOU READ ME THIS THING FOR?

Spoilers in comments. Vague for now, may get more specific.

Dear Fandom,

Having sex with a man does not make you a girl. Even if you bottom. By definition, in a male homosexual relationship, neither partner is "the girl." No, really.

On a related-and-by-no-means-secondary note, there is nothing wrong with being a girl. The word "girl" is not an insult. Female does not equal less than. Male is not inherently superior.

Having one of your characters say to the other, "This so makes you the girl" because he wants to cuddle or says "I love you" or what the fuck ever is heteronormative, miosgynist, and cliched as hell.

Get your issues worked out before you inflict them on me. I am super done with this shit.

No love,
Me. A girl.

1. Anytime your justification for anything ever includes the argument, "but that's how they do it in porn!" you lose. Instantly, forever, at everything.

2. Nothing in this world ever happened, is happening, or will happen on accident. You know why? Because it's BY ACCIDENT.

3. Oh my god enough with the random werefics.

4. ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING: Rape is not dub!con. Rape is rape. Or non-con. It is NOT dub!con. The "dub" stands for "dubious," meaning that there are some issues or questions around the consent given, but that ultimately consent IS given. When the consent is NOT given, it is non-consensual. Even if it's only ATTEMPTED rape, you still don't get to call it dub!con. Asshole.

4a. Icon used with grate irony, yayz.

I just watched the secret, actual season finale of Bones (I thought the brain tumor episode was it but surprise! There was more!) and I have Thoughts.

So, the episode in short:
( Cut even though I'm the only one who watches it, because That's What You Do. )

Two things that bothered me about this episode (aside from poor Caroline):

1. This is a hell of a cheat to get out of actually DEALING with the baby issue. Seriously, that's a kripke-worthy cheat.

2. STOP BRINGING ZACH BACK. It really fucks with my brain, okay? I love him! I always loved him! And the way he left was painfully stupid and beyond implausible and hateful beyond belief, but you have got to stop bringing him back. Especially as sweet, young, innocent, first-season Zach! With emo hair and all! GOD. Let him go, so I can mourn him and move on! I could learn to love Sweets like I loved Zach if you would only stop showing me how much more loveable Zach is! Was! Whatever I don't even know anymore!

3. This show has got some Issues. I mean, after power-watching all four seasons of Supernatural, it looks pretty fucking benign by comparison, but then even Whedon looks good when compared to kripke. But still, all this bs about men being willing to kill for you being so romantic is, uh, not. It's scary and fucked-up, and then there's Booth repeatedly referring to Bones as a possession, and let's not even touch the whole long-standing concept that Bones is All Fucked Up As A Woman because she values silly things like intelligence, competence, and accomplishment over romance and feelings and babies! They even repeatedly refer to her as a "cold fish!" But that's okay because Booth has taught her to be a woman so now she wants a baby! Like a real woman! MOTHERFUCK.

I have to go take Sophie to the vet, and then maybe drink heavily for a bit.

I can't believe we've done it again.

Light as a Feather, Stiff as a... what?; by doolabug and hija_paloma, rated R for sex and language, warning: crack. This is another vignette set in what Doola is now making me call the "Smoothie 'verse." Apparently, there will be more.

Now I'm sorry.

Link to Doola's LJ.

More Like Guidelines, by hija_paloma. Rated R for sex and language. Spoilers through season 4. Warnings/notes: This fic is an exploration of Dean's relationship with god, faith, and religion, viewed through the lens of his relationship with Castiel, and as such may offend some people. Also, there are some minor contradictions to canon found in the first section; sorry, I wrote it during season 1. THAT IS HOW LONG I HAVE BEEN WRITING THIS. Thanks to doolabug for beta and support and to monkeypuzzle for cheerleading and telling me it was okay to do this.

(I always knew I was going to hell, anyway.)