Rat Creature's Journal

( technically a spoiler for CSI 10x04, I guess, but not for the plot )

( spoilers for Merlin 2x01 )

I've seen some fans say that these days they primarily use delicious to find fanfic to read rather than following fic comms or watching archives directly. I also do that when I search for specific stuff and look for tags, but I don't really use the social network functions. Every now and then I try adding someone, especially if a rec comm also keeps track of their recs on delicious, but somehow I never really stick with it. (And only part of the reason is that delicious often tends to crash or freeze my browser if I view it with javascript enabled, which I suspect is because it can't deal well with my large number of tags or something. It's really quite pathetic -- ~4900 tags is not that many.)

So do any of you use delicious' network feature? Which people (or comm accounts) do you follow to find new fanfic? Currently I'm particularly interested in ST:AOS (though TOS also to some degree), SGA (*clutches*), Merlin, Supernatural (non-Wincest, non-RPS only), and Numb3rs, but as I'm really multifannish and fickle in my interests I'd be interested in what you follow for other fandoms too. Do you have any recs whom I should follow there?

ETA: And please feel free to point out your own account if it fits what I'm looking for.

What is the proper English term for this slight whiteish coating that some fruit like plums, blueberries or grapes naturally have? In German I've heard it called "Duftfilm" or "Reifbelag" but neither of those gave me results in a dictionary. But surely it must have a name in English as well.

Admittedly I haven't even bothered to vote this year because that advisory board was such a farce the last time around, but wasn't there supposed to be some kind of result by now? I looked at the the election community but don't see any result announcement? Are they now not showing anything even before the term starts? I didn't think the visibility and user communications of the thing could possibly get any worse than last year, but as usual LJ is full of surprises.

ETA: Not long after I wondered about this, they finally made an announcement in the news comm.

I've been thinking about the ST:AOS timeline. Presumably it is like the TOS reality until the Kelvin is destroyed by Nero. But when I thought about that, how do the timetravel events work that have various future crews (from the regular timeline) interact with the past pre-split? Like how did the events of Star Trek: First Contact happen in the AOS reality? I mean, which version of the future characters have now ended up in the past? Or am I approaching this wrong? This makes my head hurt.

So, I have been sucked into the the ST:AOS fandom, and I feel the need for having more Star Trek icons. I've had my Spock icon for a long time, and also have a Borg which, while not all that suitable for the TOS/AOS time period, aptly describes being assimilated into a new fandom. But now I'm considering to make an Uhura icon.

The snag I've run into is that I'm not sure which hairstyle I should choose. For rather obvious reason with my icon theme "resemblance" for a character depends a lot on things like associated symbols, tools, clothes and hairstyle. While I intend to use it for the new movie fandom, I somehow feel that TOS Uhura's hairstyle would be more recognizable to represent the character. So what do you think?

Is it me, or is the Kirk/Spock archive down? I was trying to follow some links in a recs post, but it is just not working for me. Wraithbait neither. It's an anti-archive conspiracy. :(

I'm wondering what other people do with their preliminary sketches and stuff. For each actually finished piece of fanart I end up with a pile of more or less awful and hideous half abandoned sketches, rough composition doodles, sketches to work out body parts, perspective, color, textures, sometimes just a couple, sometimes dozens and more. I have packrat tendencies in general, so it is hard for me to throw things out, but otoh, what do I need a pile with failed sketches of mishapen half-finished stuff for, once I have finished the work?

So I'm curious what other people do:

I've recently watched The Listener, and quite liked it. So naturally I'm now wondering whether there is any fanfic to be found for it. I've tried del.icio.us with various likely tags without success, asked google, looked on ff.net... and nothing turns up. Not a single story anywhere. An interest search on LJ yielded a single community the_listener_tv (no comms on DW or IJ), but the only fanfic posted were two very short comment ficlets.

I just can't believe nobody has written anything for it. It has a main hero Toby who is pretty, angsty (with some past trauma), orphaned and a telepath, and can be easily shipped with both his on-and-off again girlfriend Olivia, but just as well slashed with his paramedic partner Oz thanks to Toby and both Olivia both being somewhat waffling about their relationship, or paired with any number of other people. The whole series is like a fanfic blueprint what with the mix of mild supernatural SF elements, crime/medical drama, tragic mystery past and relationship options. And yet, thirteen episodes of this and I can find no fanfic anywhere? How can that be?

I went to see the new Star Trek movie last night: ( mostly squee )

So is there any fannish infrastructure for the rebooted Star Trek universe yet? Communities, newsletters, that kind of thing?

I have been awfully quiet lately for no particular reason except feeling somewhat down and uncommunicative, and incapable of producing interesting content. Also, public commitments to fanart projects -- now already ages ago in internet time -- don't really seem to counter sloth sufficiently in my case, sorry about that, I kind of suck wrt creative output right now.

Anyway to come back to my subject line, besides squeeing over the SCC finale -- but feeling too much like "flail!!" to produce any interesting or coherent thoughts about it, but there better be a third season or at least a lot of long fanfic exploring things -- and playing online flash games, I have also rewatched a whole bunch of Joan of Arcadia episodes recently. I've never read fanfic for the series when it first aired, but now I'm wondering whether anyone on my f-list knows where to find good JoA fanfic or has any recs. I looked at crack_van but don't see any there. I thought it can't hurt to ask before I venture on my own to look whether any of the JoA on ff.net is good.

Is there a new spambot tactic where some account friends you, you check out the LJ, as you tend to do, and then see some stupid ad in an f-locked entry as the sole LJ content? Do you report these accounts somewhere, or doesn't it count because they spam you in their own locked entries you've been just tricked to look at?

( as usual I am confused, spoilers for Heroes 3x15 )

( I'm confused. )

Does anyone have links to tutorials and/or references for drawing injuries and wounds? Like for the purpose of comics (or angsty h/c fanart in my case), so more a moderate gore and realism level. I just vaguely traumatized myself by googling for injury references with very little applicable results, but surely this is a common problem?

I was in the mood to look at some fanart and decided to browse deviantArt, also wondering whether it might be good as another place to post my stuff. So I just went to the site, and previously I've always followed links to an artist or a picture, and I wasn't too thrilled with the site design then, but on that level it works okay. But how does anyone cope with this site design on a more general level? Or is it just me? It drives me crazy. Though I guess you get used to everything eventually, right?

Of course it could be worse. DA has at least general categories, and fanart is separate (though it would help if the individual fandoms were separated more as well but I guess it's because it's more general use, not just fandom), and there is a search engine, but I still find DA hard to use. For example I found out that the group accounts I have seen linked actually don't exist officially in the site's infrastructure. That I learned from the FAQ after I had been looking like for ten minutes or so to find a section for group galleries (I thought it might be easier to find fandoms that way), and was completely baffled. Apparently they exist unofficially through more than one person using an account somehow. At least that explains why these groups aren't more common. I expect it must be rather nightmarish from a maintenance and security standpoint for group owners to have to share the main password and not have different right levels or something like that.

Still, those of you more familiar with the site, do you recommend getting an account there? Is the function where you watch artists userfriendly? Does posting stuff there reach a different audience than LJ or is more of a wash? I mean, I'd cope with obnoxious interfaces for the potential of even a small amount of extra feedback. *g* Any opinions on the site?

( cut for spoilers )

I've been trying to watch the True Blood premiere, but I think I need subtitles to follow this. I'm missing half the dialog, or so it seems, because even though I understand more than half the words, I miss one word or so in every bit of dialog, and of course it's inevitably a crucial one. These Southern accents are worse than the mumbling people on SGA.

Unrelated, does anyone know what happened to "flambeau" (on LJ) that the LJ is deleted?

So, I started reading the second part -- though I'm not that far along yet -- and I really don't get how this vampire reaction to blood is supposed to work. Apparently even a little blood, like from a paper cut, taxes their control, unless they have lots of practice like Carlisle. Okay, whatever.

But how does that work while they are in a school where half the students will bleed three to five days per month?? Granted, it's not a lot of blood, but more than from a paper cut, so they must smell that. And it's not like they growl a lot at random girls from what I gathered. Is this explained somewhere? Did I miss something? Does menstrual bloood smell icky? What? I don't get it.