Rusalka's ramblings

This post contains all the tags I have used to tag my posts so far. Tomorrow, I shall post-date it so that it always sits on top of the journal. And I will edit it to add new tags as I create them. Let's see how well this works.

1. My subconscious decided to get inventive last night and presented me with a dream that I'm pretty sure was some sort of Horation Hornblower AU set in WWII. The hero, a British navy officer, was very guilt-ridden and angsty, and also suffering from PTSD because some children he rescued from the wreck of a passenger ship got ill and died from being in the cold water for too long, and he was blaming himself for not rescuing them sooner. He was telling all about it to his sympathetic mentor over dinner, but I woke up before I could find out if was all leading up to angsty mentor/student hurt/comfort sex. I totally have no idea where any of that came from.

2. The Boy and I had a lovely between-Hannukah-and-Christmas dinner on Saturday. I made a bison pot roast in the crockpot, with garlic mashed potatoes, glazed carrots and eggnog cake. It was all super-tasty, and now I have leftovers for the rest of the week. Yum.

3. My advisor gave me back my first draft of Paper #2 with so many comments scribbled over it, you can barely see the original text over all the red ink. I nearly fainted, but she assures me that the paper is actually "coming along nicely" and she's very pleased with it. Am not engaged in frantic rewriting. Also, I have finished the second research proposal I needed to write, and should be able to get at least one postdoc application submitted before I leave at the end of the week. This is all part of my cunning plan to maintain the collective delusion that I'm going to earn my PhD and get a real job within the year. If enough people believe it, it becomes true, right?

4. Holy crap, my little "letter to Marvel" post got linked at Shakesville!!!

5. Less then four days before The Boy and I come to NYC! Who's in the area and wants to hang out?

Yuletide story is done, woo-hoo! The beta has declared that it doesn't suck, so hopefully the recipient will like it too. My fannish obligations for the year are now complete. Whew!

School obligations are still in progress. I have a thesis abstract, a bunch of cover letters, and a complete research proposal for one postdoc application. I need to write a modified version of the same proposal for another application, and an essay for a third. Draft of paper #2 is just about ready to go out to my co-authors, who will no doubt have ten million revisions to suggest. I have a great desire to crawl into bed and not come out till next year.

Only 8 days left until I run off to New York with The Boy, yay!

Iron Man 2 trailer

So. Awesome.

I appreciate your recent efforts to spotlight female superheroes in comics that women might actually want to read, as opposed to just comics that fanboys want to masturbate to. No, really. I was all ready to give up hope for you, but I'm really enjoying many of your recent woman-centric comics, especially Spider-Woman and the Nomad miniseries. But I'm starting to wonder about your choice of terminology.

First, there's the "Black Widow and the Marvel Girls" miniseries. I've read the first issue and quite liked it, so kudos to you. But is "girls" really the collective noun you want to use for the Enchantress, Spider-Woman, She-hulk, Ms Marvel and the Wasp? Before you answer that, please pause for a moment to consider how any of these characters would respond in you called them "girl" to their face.

Then, on your website, you have this article on the "Top 10 Ladies of the Avengers." I suppose "ladies" isn't as actively condescending as "girls," but it's still a term that comes loaded with all sorts of cultural baggage, most of it totally inappropriate to the characters on the list. And while I'm not normally a gambling woman, I'm willing to bet that if you'd compiled a list of top 10 male Avengers, you wouldn't call it the "Top 10 Gentlemen" or "Top 10 Boys." You'd call it the "Top 10 Avengers Men" or (much more likely) just the "Top 10 Avengers," and feel no need to add a qualifier.

Now you're offering up Girl Comics. The cover looks awesome, the idea of spotlighting female creators in all aspects of the comic is admirable, and I'm totally going to buy the book. But again, Girl Comics? Really? Why not just drop all pretense and call it "Comic no self-respecting fanboy would touch with a ten-foot pole because it has cooties?"

"Woman" is not a swear word. You don't need a euphemism for it. I promise.

Love Reserved affection,
marinarusalka

cap_ironman exchange fic: submitted a whole day before the deadline. Go me!

yuletide fic: 3000 words written yesterday. Fic is now over 5000 words, and still not finished, though I think I'm down to the last scene and will finish tonight. This is going to be my longest Yuletide fic ever by at least 1000 words. And I still don't have a beta for it. Eep.

Rewarded myself for all the writing by going to see The Princess and the Frog last night, and enjoyed it muchly. I think Tiana just might be my favorite Disney heroine ever.

I think I'm starting to run low on steam, though, after nearly two weeks of being crazy productive. This morning I'm all headachy and unfocused and can't seem to get anything done. Not bood, as I still have a bunch of things that absolutely, positively have to get done this week. Sigh.

A few things that made me cheerful today:

1. Great big rainstorm. Free car wash from Mother Nature, whee!

2. My LJ profile looks as if a little cookie blizzard hit it. Thanks, you guys! *hugs flist*

3. The power's back on. I can has hot food and tea, yay! (Yes, it was out in the entire neighborhood earlier, probably do to the aforementioned rainstorm. But I was only home for about fifteen minutes of it.)

4. My weekend burst of productivity lasted at least a little ways into Monday, so I got some good work done on the research proposal I've been working on.

5. There's a fluffy orange cat draped over my knees and he's purring really loud.

First of all, thanks so much to dotfic, janissa11, geekmama caffienekitty, and sasha_davidovna for the lovely snowflake cookies. My profile page looks so festive now!

Second of all, holy crap you guys, I wrote over 2200 words of yuletide fic in one day! Okay, so it's probably less than half the story, but I have momentum now, dammit. I figure if I work revising on my cap_ironman exchange story in the evenings this week and have another nice bout of yuletide writing next weekend, I'll have both stories finished by the appropriate deadlines, yay me.

The crazy thing is, it's not even like I spent the whole day writing, either. I've also baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies, cooked a ginormous pot of vegetable stew, finished knitting the sleeves and part of the yoke on the sweater I'm making, and spent several hours playing all the cool new games on the new Wii Fit Plus that drewshi sent me. I'm on a roll.

I guess I got the momentum going yesterday, when I got up early to do the boat part of the training I'm doing to become a volunteer on the Birch Aquarium's whale watch cruises. We didn't see any whales, because we never left the harbor -- the point was to get all the volunteers familiar with the boat. Next week is the classroom part of the training, and then I'll be going on the actual cruises from mid-January to March. I'm feeling pretty psyched.

With any luck at least some of this productivity will carry over to my school work tomorrow. I have a tone of stuff to get done before The Boy and I head out to NY on the 25th.

Right now, I'm going to sit here with tea and cookies and watch the first Narnia movie on the Disney Channel. I feel very virtuous.

I have a draft of my cap_ironman fic, yay! It's a 3500-word sloppy mess, but I think I can whip it into shape before the deadline. In any case, at least I'm know guaranteed not to default, so that's one crossed off the list. This weekend I'm going to start on the yuletide assignment. I've been reviewing the source and have the general shape of the story in my head, so hopefully it won't take me too long.

Of course, the reason I'm focusing on fic is to avoid thinking about the OMGINSANE amount of work I have to do at school before Christmas. Eep.

We really lucked out with the weather on Friday, because Saturday was gray and rainy and cold. In the freakin' Mojave Desert. What's up with that?

The Boy lent me his wide-angle lens for some of the shots, so if you see the sky looking extra-dramatic in some of the pics, that's why.

( Anyhow, one to the pictures. )

For those who want more, The Boy's pictures are here.

Happy Thanksgiving day to everyone who's celebrating.

The Boy and I are going up to Palm Springs to have turkey dinner with his mom and stepdad, then going on to Joshua Tree until Saturday, so I shall be internet-less for a couple of days. See y'all later!

The "Gold Box deal of the day" on Amazon.com today is the complete SGA series on DVD for $88.99.

Most recently seen in yahtzee63's LJ:

1. Write down the names of 10 characters.
2. Write a fic of fifteen words or fewer for every prompt, using the characters determined by the numbers. Do NOT read the prompts before you do step 1.

1. Victor Henriksen, Supernatural
2. Sarah Walker, Chuck
3. Maria Hill, Marvel Comics
4. Zuko, Avatar: the Last Airbender
5. Tony Stark, Iron Man movieverse
6. Iolaus, Hercules: the Legendary Journeys
7. Parker, Leverage
8. Lord Bowler, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
9. Hermione Granger, Harry Potter
10. Temperance Brennan, Bones

( the cracktastic result )

( spoilers have some last words )

I'm gradually uploading my stories to Archive of Our Own here. So far, I like it a lot. The uploading interface is a little clunky, which is to be expected given that it just opened for beta, but it's easy enough to use and I like the look of the site.

I've begun by uploading my Iolaus/Iphicles stories, from way back in the early days of HtLJ fandom. Talk about ancient history. Looking over the stories for the first time in years makes me wince a little; I was a much clunkier writer back then than I am now. (Or at least, I hope I'm less clunky now.) But on the whole, I still think they're pretty good stories.

I feel all nostalgic now. Those were some fun fannish times on the old ksmithares list.

For example: this manpain flowchart.

Dean Winchester and his single sparkling emo tear approve.

Hee, this assignment is going to be fun!

My reaction to this episode was kind of divided, so I'm dividing this post into two parts.

( The squee. )

( The rant. )

Ah well. The preview for next week looks awesome, though.

( Spoilers won't let us have any fun. )