Three dollars and some change

So, a crack!theory about Doctor Who and the last 20 seconds of that episode:

( Cut for spoilers for Impossible Astronaut, Day of the Moon, and the crackiest theory every! )

Next week: Pirates! It'd be even better if it were zombie pirates but oh well.

yeah, so, this happened:

Criminal Minds Cuts A.J. Cook, Will Add New Cast Member, Source Says.

The producers essentially fired AJ Cook (JJ) and are trying to cut Paget Brewster to a limited number of shows. All the male actors are coming back.

Oh no they didn't.

There are a bunch of reactions from fans and even the actors on Twitter (ajcookofficial, Pagetpaget, JoeMantegna, Vangsness, Gibsonthomas) but the reason I broke my LJ radio silence (which I have been maintaining because of a severe case of creative block) is because I'd like to share the following:

An open letter to the Producers of Criminal Minds

Sirs,

In a show that features, at its very core, extreme and sadistic violence against women at nearly every turn, it is vital to the balance of Criminal Minds to have strong female characters. For five years, Jennifer Jareau has given Criminal Minds a strong centering influence, a level of humanity, that consistently provides a balance against the violence in the show. It has been recognized more than once on the show that JJ is the first one to filter all cases and all the violence sent the BAU, and she works as a grounding point to the team by virtue of her character and actions. What AJ Cook has built with a character that could have been little more than a puff piece is astonishing, and I urge you to reconsider your decision to not bring her back for the next season of Criminal Minds.

Emily Prentiss portrays a strong, capable female character who is action-oriented, pragmatic, and also capable of a level of empathy with female crime victims that cannot be realistically taken on by any of the male characters in the show. Paget Brewster has taken a character that, in other hands (and even 10 years ago) could have been a shrill caricature, a woman trying to get in the "boys club", with a chip on her shoulder and something to prove, and made Prentiss into an incredibly strong character who adds tremendous value to the show. Sadly, characters like Prentiss are thin on the ground even in 2010, and to lose her presence on the show would be a step backwards for Criminal Minds and CBS.

It is my opinion that the background and history that both Emily Prentiss and Jennifer Jareau have built on the show, and the incredible acting that Paget Brewster and AJ Cook have brought to the ensemble over the years, are invaluable to the success of the show. The loss of JJ, and the reduction of Prentiss's role on the show, will hurt the show beyond what may be sustainable on the long-term, in terms of both gaining new fans and keeping existing ones.

It is also being reported that there are decisions to bring in a new female character to the show. By all means, please bring in new characters to complement the existing cast. The hallmark of a great show is the ability to add and grow. But please don't think that the fan base will be willing to accept the firing of AJ Cook, and the demotion of Paget Brewster. A show as consistently violent as Criminal Minds requires a certain level of trust from its audience, a trust that has built up over the last five years by the entire ensemble of characters, of which JJ and Prentiss (and Ms. Cook and Ms. Brewster) are a vital and irreplaceable part.

Sincerely,

[my name]

I'm going to polish this up over the next few days and then ship it snail-mail off to CBS. But the core of my message can be summed up as:

In a show that features extreme violence against women at every turn, you need strong female characters to play the hero, to show/tell that not all women are victims, that sometimes we can be the strong ones.

So yeah, those are my thoughts on this mess. If you're a Criminal Minds fan and would like to send a message to CBS, please do so (in snail mail format - harder to ignore). Or else you can sign the online petition, or pass around the message. (Sending a message of support to AJ and Paget would not be amiss, either).

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And if you're not a Criminal Minds fan and you made it this far down... how are things going with you?

So I was thinking about it, and I'm not going to change the journal's default setting because I actually like my non-lj readers. I tested the "adult concepts" thing out on an old post, and when you're logged out, if you try to access such a post, then you get "14 Adult Content Notice : The content that you are about to view could contain adult concepts which may not be suitable for minors. To continue, you must confirm that you are at least 14 years of age. "

Yeah... no. Since a little clicky button won't stop people from lying about their age anyway, I'm not going to inconvenience those readers of mine who are over 14 (because seriously, is anyone out there under 14?) and who don't want to have an LJ account. Because my suspicious mind is thinking they want more people to sign up for lj.

I'll be changing some of the more riske posts to the age appropriate setting later on. Since most of my fic is gen anyway, and I'm not going to lock up fic for swearing, it shouldn't be that big of a deal.

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Thanks to everyone who nominated my fics over at the TTH COA! 19 nominations, compared with last year's 13! So cool. I'll post links and banners once voting begins on Friday! Check back!

!!

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And I made a shiny banner for the Rory Gilmore is the illegitimate genius daughter of Rodney McKay (more manageably known as Physics of the Spin) series:

( click for banner! )

Even I, with my head buried in the fandom sand, have noticed the recent mess over FanLib.

So I have dusted off my soap box and have some words. Keep in mind that I'm tired after an 11-hour work day and am pretty much incoherent. So I will let the linky links do my talking.

First off, I can't even begin the backstory on this one, I have some links that I think will nicely sum up my feelings on the matter:

The comm to end all comms: life_wo_fanlib

101 reasons by liz_marcs to stay away from FanLib

As proof that we will slash anything: FanLib is already generating its own advertising slash fic: "In Just Seven Fics, I Can Make You A Man" (FanLib slash, rated ... Um.) by lizbee

And something from a dude named Henry Jenkins who sets out the whole FanLib background in nice plain text and language.

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Then, word from on high:

Cory Doctorow: In Praise of Fanfic -- in which a nice level-headed guy says something nice about us fanfic writers.

He's even so well liked that Tanya Huff/andpuff (my new saint, after having watched the first several eps of Blood Ties -- omg a fun show) points everyone in the essay's direction, without mentioning FanLib directly.

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Then why I'm not too worked up over it:

My fandom has already been put on notice.

I speak, of course, about the Anita Blake books. If you follow my fics, you'll have noticed that no matter how annoyed I get with current canon, I can't stay away. Dawning Light, Inevitable, Switchback, etc., etc. Anyway, Laurell K. Hamilton has made some noise in the past about fanfic being disallowed, and to this day most mainstreamish fic archives won't allow Anita Blake fic in. That's fine. I can pretty much guarantee that my fandom's never going to bcome part of the mass of FanLib (Can't tell if the "Lib" here stands for Liberation, Liberty or Libel). I like it like that. Ignore me and I won't hurt the canon.

And that's not even beginning with the crossover angle to all this.

To make a long story short (too late!) I'm going to stay as far away from FanLib as possible, as it's not the sort of place I want my writing.

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In unrelated news, I'm fascinated with the song Fulsom Prison Blues. I miss Johnny Cash.

The Anita Blake Danse Macabre retrospective - Thanks and So Long to the Plot

( In which Mhalachai discusses her opinion on Danse Macabre. Behind an LJ cut for spoilers. Not complimentary )

Let me sum up my evening:

Bus ride home: $2.25
Man-hours in cleaning up the kitchen: 2.4
Calling the plumber after he's 2.5 hours late, only to be told that someone at the office was supposed to have called me to cancel, and it will take a much longer time than originally planned for them to dig up my floor to replace the pipes: Priceless.

For the little screaming frustrations in life, there's Mastercard.
(Actually, there's my landlady to deal with that.)

I'm going to find some dinner.

A polite rant to the makers of the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie:

( Cut for rant and for a promo image of the movie. Also, might be construed as tiny spoilers for HBP )

ETA to rant: According to my math from the tombstone, Voldemort's father was 28 when he was killed? That makes him ELEVEN when he sired his son. RAR!

Yeah. Remember that comment I made a few days ago about a new chapter of Inevitable? Well, here's the thing. I'm covering a huge libel trial at work, which looks like it might be going on for well over a month, and it's taking up all my energy.

My resolution is thus: I will endeavour to write when I can, but things are being shuffeled around in light of work.

I repeat: I am not stopping writing, but until the trial is over I'm not sure how much time I will have to write.

(don't kill me plzthnx)

*headdesk*

No, those are the pyjamas Anita "slept" in, not the ones she "spelt" in. Rar.

As an aside, a weasley100 drabble: Scrapbook

WIP meme: Take any currently unfinished fics you have and write the first line/paragraph from each. (Gacked from beren_writes)

( Cut to save your flists )
*counts* Nine? NINE? *faints from the strain*