Bethany

BIRTHDAY POST!!!!!

I may have finally reached that age where birthdays are to be dreaded rather than celebrated; but thankfully the internet is an ageless wonder, an anomaly of time and space, and a perfect venue for a "Things That Make Me Happy!" post! AND YOU CAN PLAY ALONG! (Seriously, please do.)

( I'll stick with you baby for a thousand years, nothing's gonna touch you in these golden yeeeeeeeaaaaaars!! )

I'd like to keep this open until I leave on Wednesday, so please! Spam away! Picspams, gifs, fanvids, basically anything in the history of ever that you feel like linking to or flailing over... all expressions of joy and happiness are welcome.

Now that I am finally catching up on the internet at large from the past few weeks, it's time for some linkspam!

I'm still trying to get through all of the greatness that came out of various Robin Hood-related gift exchanges. Not to toot my own organizational horn or anything, but the capslock_hood Secret Santa turned out AWESOME, even if the comments completely ate my inbox. LINK IN CASE YOU MISSED THE GREATNESS. (And actually, oh, I just realized -- there's still one gift missing, but hopefully we'll have it up soon enough.) My own contribution of a shameless Guy/Robin vid:

Guy/Robin - Shackled to Each Other from ForYourEdification on Vimeo.

Then an_lagat_glas wrote me some Mazabella (!!!! I KNOW!!) for isabella_giz: the red queen and the white

lalumena made made me a rockin' desktop for robinxisabella.

And then I got two completely fabulous gifts for gxm_secretsanta, which I guess you can't see if you aren't a member... but hulamoth very kindly reposted her fic: (This is Not a) Dinner Date. AU Guy/Marian collegefic. YOU KNOW YOU WANT IT.

A few vid recs ( embedded behind the cut: )

Now that I have some free time to catch up on sewing projects, I'm going back to my old habit of browsing etsy for some handmade inspiration -- and, as usual, I have happened upon some true horrors. WHAT, PRAY TELL, IS THIS? NO, REALLY, WHAAAAAT??!!?! It's like that episode of Daria where Jane wants to become The Lady and The Tiger by bleaching streaks into her hair. Looking at embroidery pieces always depresses me, though, because on the one hand I deeply appreciate the sheer number of long tedious hours that go into making these things, but on the other hand... sorry. Why on Earth would somebody pay $40 for this? I really really love this store, though, and wish I had $30 to drop on a pincushion. LOOK AT HOW ADORABLE THIS ONE IS.

I also picked up my final paycheck from Retail Job today, and it was quite a bit more than I anticipated because I forgot that I was getting paid for two weeks instead of just one. Whee! Unexpected money! (Or, alternately -- whee! I have no handle on my personal finances and forget when my pay periods are!)

ETA: HOW COULD I HAVE FORGOTTEN TO INCLUDE THIS??! The whole series is awesome, but, I mean, COME ON OF COURSE THIS ONE IS MY FAVORITE:

- How was your morning? Mine involved maggots, possibly in punishment for oversleeping.

- capslock_hood rewatch today! SO. EXCITED. I put my own Robin Hood rewatch on hold so I could jump on board with the capschat, so I think it's only going to overlap with what I've been watching by one episode (1.07, but I honestly do not mind watch that one as often as possible). Come join if you can!

- I love bygonefashion.

- TV catch-up! Leverage just started back this season. Sometimes I feel like I'm watching this show for the wrong reasons -- I rarely connect with the victim plot of the week and tend to find them rather dull (I mean, I know the central conceit of the show is helping those who can't help themselves, but could we maybe have clients with even the teeniest amount of character agency?), and then I usually lose the con about halfway through -- but I just love the tone of the show and all of the hero characters so darn much. Like, honestly, I just want them to all sit around in that pub all day (random aside, but the Ashes to Ashes part of my brain is all like OMG IS IT SIGNIFICANT??? that Nate hangs out in a bar below street level and then lives in a rented room upstairs above it? How is this relevant to his psyche? Is he descending into his deepest primal urges every time he goes down and thinks about having a drink? Is the upstairs representative of his upper brain functions and the intricate planning of his cons and how he uses it to mask the ache of his recovering alcoholism? AM I POSSIBLY THINKING TOO MUCH ABOUT THIS??) and talk about, I don't know, the new episodes of Torchwood or the finer points of jumping out of a plane or something, and I would happily watch that for weeks on end. All of my favorite bits were just silly character moments -- Parker and the fingerquotes, Sophie's singing being not quite as good as her acting, the Eliot/Hardison exchange about Pakistan, Eliot busting through the wall with a chainsaw... oh, team! It's so nice to have everybody together again.

- I've also been keeping up with Royal Pains, which I don't actually think I've posted about since the first episode. Well. Hmmm. I think it underwent a growth period during the early episodes -- like Leverage, it does have a tendency to get rather heavy handed with it's moral righteousness (Royal Pains drinking game -- every time somebody complains vaguely about "the system," take a shot!) -- but it's matured quite nicely and I've been getting into the stories a lot more lately. I really enjoyed "No Man is an Island" (have I mentioned that the Evan/Hank dynamic is basically my favorite thing about the show? Because... it totally is), and then I thought this week's was good as well. Things that I find refreshing about the show:

1. I like that Hank is actually invested in his work now, instead of being the reluctant hero dragged around by Evan (see: the end of "No Man is an Island." GOOD CHOICE, HANK), and I like that it's progressed beyond the straightforward Robin Hood parallel -- i.e. he only treats rich people so he can take all their money and afford to treat those without resources. Rather, the show has established that he tries to find a way to help all of his patients, because there are problems in people's lives that aren't necessarily all about money, and if you think it's ridiculous to define people based purely on their income, then... maybe you shouldn't define people based purely on their income (which is more of what Jill tends to do)?

2. So relatedly, I like that there are a bunch of recurring characters and that we have a chance to see Hank develop a relationship with these people he's otherwise rather contemptuous of.

3. To go back to the Jill-Hank relationship, then -- well, hmmm. I'm still uncertain about her character. Aside from the fact that she is the least believable hospital administrator ever (like, okay, I know that TV needs hotter and younger professionals than exist in real life, but it borders on ridiculous; IMDb doesn't list an age for the actress, but she doesn't look more than 30), she's kind of, well... boring and one-sided? To return to the Robin Hood parallel (because, obviously, everything can be reduced to that) it seemed like the show was setting up Hank as Hood and then Jill as Marian, his sort of go-to girl on the inside... but now it feels like it's flipped, and suddenly Hank is the one who gets to live both sides of working high society but also helping the poor, and dealing with the emotional issues of each, while Jill is stuck in the Bobbin mentality of "all rich people suck, let's throw rocks at them. Also, being smug and morally superior is clearly the best way to get people to like me." Okay, this is probably sounding a lot meaner than I meant it to because I don't completely hate her character, but she still hasn't fully grown on me. I do really like how her relationship with Hank has been developing, though. While I'm not usually a fan of "OMG THESE TWO CHARACTERS JUST MET BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY PERFECT FOR EACH OTHER. Like, look, they have matching cars and they look into each other soooouls and don't you just want them to get married and have beautiful babies? LOVE. PURE TRUE HOLY LOVE and they're hooking up, like, now," I get equally tired of, "OMG THESE TWO CHARACTERS JUST MET BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY PERFECT FOR EACH OTHER but they can never be together due to lame reasons that we are fabricating for drama, so enjoy the UST for the next five seasons but don't bank on anything." So I like that their romance has been rather straightforward -- they like each other, they have a lot in common, they each find the other attractive, neither has any other romantic obligations -- so they get together, like two normal, grown adults who want to have a normal, grown adult relationship, instead of mooning around about each other wangsting over "does he like like me or just like me??"

4. Not a praise, more of a nitpick -- dude. NEEDS MOAR DIVYA. She is so underused and, incidentally, so much more interesting than Jill (OMG the Robin Hood comparisons continue -- okay, so, Divya is like Djaq, right? Because she's snarky and good with medicine and just awesome in general. So then Evan is Allan, the loudmouth grifter... and now I can totally justify why I ship the two of them... Okay, I should stop before this parallel runs any deeper. Also, there is no Sheriff or Guy equivalent, which makes me sad).

Anyway, moving on to the last and most important point...

- HARRY POTTER. I actually made up a list of things I've been meaning to post about and accidentally put Harry Potter on it twice, ha. YES IT IS THAT IMPORTANT. ( Thoughts about the Half-Blood Prince film )

Oh, but quick vid flail -- so I've been going through all of my old Harry Potter links and such, and, okay, I'm willing to bet that you've already all seen it because 1) it's almost two years old and 2) IT'S KIND OF THE MOST AMAZING VID EVER, but even if it isn't new to you it certainly demands to be re-experienced: the first four Potter films to Snakes on a Plane. UGHHH HARRY POTTER WHY SO EPIC?

Sometimes I feel like a terrible person for having Mallozzi's blog on my regular reading list... Yet what can I say? I will troll any and all show-related blogs because, oh yes, I am such a sucker for behind-the-scenes info. Anyway, I kind of figured I'd just drop off once SGA ended, but when it's a Sunday night and I'm bored and what can the internets offer to amuse me...? Well, long story short, Rob Cooper Q&A is up, and and and:

I was also greatly inspired by...There Will Be Blood during the time I was writing Vegas.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. OH SGA. NEVER CHANGE. EVEN NOW THAT YOU'RE CANCELED.

Also, speaking of other shows with blogging-inclined executive producers -- thanks to darkeyedwolf's oh-so-seductive pimp post, I have picked up yet another fandom! Leverage! Which you should all be watching! It's like Robin Hood crossed with Firefly crossed with awesome.