It's my party and I'll geek out if I want to.

 So...I kind of disappeared off the face of the earth for like, a year. BLAME COLLEGE. (And also cheating on LJ with Blogger, again. Shh!) But the freshman year is over, holy crap, and as I am currently unemployed this summer - sigh - I have a lot more free time. Hopefully that will change.

So, some random stuff. Onward!

What you should be listening to: 'Gossip in the Grain' - Ray LaMontagne. My inner music geek is a bit of a hick. Of this I am convinced. 

I wish I could buy everything from birdsNbeez: LOOK AT TEH PRETTY. Seriously, I want. 

Currently I'm really into steampunk, Castle, Glee, The Vampire Diaries (the show), Lady Gaga, growing my hair to BSL (it's a serious undertaking, lol), Doctor Who, gardening, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Carnivale, and...there's probably more but I'm drawing a blank. So if anyone is interested in any of those hobbies/tv shows/what-have-you and can point me towards some good communities for them, please do so! 

... that I never get tired of watching Anthony Stewart Head in Rocky Horror (in drag!)? Seriously, that shit never. gets. old. Every single time, I am all KING GILES IN DRAG FANGIRL SQUEEEEEEE.

Nothing much to report, my munchkins. Moving away to Boston on Sunday. Wish me luck!

Also for the lulz: Young Frankenstein outtakes. Gene Wilder = my hero.

 My last day at the Hellmouth was two days ago. It was pretty uneventful, to be honest. Rachel appreciated the scarf I made her ("It's pink! I like it!"), Fire Woman was not there, and L'Artistie Chinoise just kind of looked at me like, "Oh well, there goes another one." I feel nothing but pity for the next poor girl they have lined up to work there. Yesterday I had some woman call me, drunk out of her damn fool mind, (Why must people drunk dial my Chinese restaurant? Or any food establishment, for that matter?) to complain about the food. "It's too SAWWWWLTY," she drawled, and I cringed for the 10,468th time from the horror of Jersey accents. Someone please tell me that I do not sound like that when I speak. Please.

 

John Green's birthday was a few days ago, yay! You can spot my crazy ass self in his birthday video, about three and a half minutes in, if you would like to see the fire truck red that is my hair. That was actually just after I'd rinsed the dye out (which, holy hell, Smurf suicide bomber in the shower!). It has calmed down a bit, but... it is whack, yo.

Last night I watched The Secret of Moonacre after seeing this video. Stylistically speaking, it is gorgeous - the cinematography, the costumes, the sets, etc are all enchanting, without exception. Dakota Blue Richards even gives a solid performance for what she was given to work with, and there is a chap who looks like he just might be wasshisname from My Chemical Romance, which adds to the lulz. But there is just something missing. The whole movie is an inconsistently written and oddly paced WTF clusterfuck, and not the good kind of WTF, either. 

 

The Lovely Ashleigh and I went to the Renaissance Faire this past Sunday with her sister and our respective mommies, yay. It was incredibly fun, as usual, and I regret that I won't have the time for a second trip before moving away to school. Thanks to several vendors at the faire and a few weeks of saving up, I am now the proud owner of my own pair of green fairy wings, a rose heart pewter pendant in blue, a "Majestic Fairy" necklace, and this Renae Taylor fairy art print. Now I have three Fellowship Foundry necklaces, including my "ball fairy" one from last year; methinks I should look into stock from them, haha. Are we seeing a pattern here? Ashleigh has somehow passed on her somewhat unhealthy fairy obsession to me, and I have NO IDEA how it happened, but I am already making inquiries on several on my knitting forums about how to go about knitting some custom lace fairy wings to be mounted on jeweler's wire. Because I am insane. 

I call the fairy necklace my "Evenstar necklace" in my brain because it kind of reminds me of Arwen's pendant in the LotR movies (Yes, I am  HUGE NERD, but it does not help that the company is called Fellowship Foundry, for the love of Pete. They are just asking for it.) I did notice that the necklace, however, with otherwise all turquoise plastic stones, has one stone that is more emerald in color. This isn't immediately noticeable on first glance, but I do feel kind of duped into buying what amounts to a very pretty dud. haha. So from henceforth I am christening it my Evenstar!fail necklace, though I still love it. 

The formidable Fire Woman has been back at the Hellmouth for about a week now after visiting family in China for a few months. The following exchange occurred today with a rather chatty lady customer:

Lady: It's nice to see you back!
Fire Woman: Thank you. I went to China, you know, visit my mom. (Which, side note: WHAT? Mother Of Fire Woman must be like 100 years old.)
Lady: Oh, that's lovely that you still get to visit with your parents. My father passed away in 2007, and I lost my mother two months ago. 
Fire Woman (not understanding): *smiles broadly and nods* Good...good! 
Lady: o.O 

Ahahaha. I know, I am horrible, but it is admittedly a little funny. Because sometimes, apparently, smiling and nodding when you don't understand something does not always work out well. Fire Woman kind of nudged me after the woman left, like, Uh-oh, what did I do?, to which I had no choice but to reply, "She said her mom and dad died." Fire Woman then proceeded to nearly spit out the water she was drinking with the most hilarious expression on her face and LITERALLY LAUGH her ASS OFF. I shit you not.

Sometimes, I think I might miss the Hellmouth when I leave...just a little bit.

 A godawful lyrics meme! Run for your lives!
1. Hit shuffle on your iPod or whatever.
2. Pick a lyric from the first 15 songs that come up.
3. Have your friends guess, no cheating. 

( Here we go... )

 So I have made two random decisions.

1. I would make a really, really good space alien. True facts. You know that new show that is coming out on NBC about seemingly benevolent aliens who are secretly trying to take over the world? I could totally pull that shit off. No seriously, I totally could do the somewhat-attractive-but-actually-kind-of-freaky vibe. It would be a wonderful use for my crazy-facing!

 

2. I kind of want to attend a Quaker meeting. No, really. Like I'm seriously thinking of taking the bus to one of the meetings in Boston when I go to college and seeing what it's about. Basically, I was on Feministing.com and saw a link that was all, "Quakers approve gay marriage," so I was like, "A RELIGION THAT DOES NOT HATE ME, whoohoo!" and did a bit of research and...actually kind of dig it. You are SHOCKED, I know, that little atheist me is even considering such a thing, but believe me when I tell you that it is people I have problems with, not spirituality. Being forced into the clusterfuck that is Roman Catholicism for eighteen years can disillusion a girl damn well, if you know what I'm saying.

 Everyone should go read my new LJ bffl bradeatspeep's recap on Merlin 1x01: The Dragon's Call. (I think if we're good, she'll write more! Shh, don't tell. =P) I introduced her to Merlin and therefore it is my proud duty to pimp her stuff. Trufax.

I am not your fetish.
Love, 
Sarah

(Note on the following post: To make it easier on my typin' fingers, I use "queer" as an umbrella term to include LGBTQQ people in general.)

Most of the time I love fandom. I really, really do. But then I look at the newsletter on my flist everyday and see 10,000 new Merlin/Arthur fics and maybe like, two Gwen/Morgana fics (on a good day). I'm honestly trying to figure out why this is, because it is a shame. Needless to say, I stopped reading Merlin/Arthur unless it is directly recced to me weeks ago, mostly because of the sheer volume of fics, but also as my own mini-protest. 

I know that Merlin is One Big Gay Fandom. I'm willing to guess that at least a little under half of us are queer girls, if the meetup was any indication of the LJ Merlin fandom in general. So where is all the lovely femslash? 

I'm not even going to get started on the weird need that most fandoms have to separate femslash from slash, because plenty of other people have commented on the misogyny in that. But basically, when we don't include women in the definition of slash, it is only further classifying us as "other" or "less than." More on those terms later. 

I fully realize that people like to write about what turns them on, and for a lot of people, that is guy on guy action. I don't have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is fetishizing gay relations to the point of no return. Because fetishism and exoticism by nature involve a (usually privileged) group picking the "desirable" qualities of a practice/other group and rejecting the rest. And what I see when I look at the Merlin fandom is a mostly white group of lower to upper middle class women fetishizing gay men, which not only can be disrespectful to Real Life queer men, but (perhaps inadvertently, perhaps not) rejects queer women. 

WHICH MAKES NO SENSE, as I have said, because there are so many lesbian/bi gals in the fandom. Part of the allure in writing slash, maybe, is the idea that it will never really happen in canon. Sure, we can shout "SUBTEXT! Actually, never mind subtext, it's TEXT!" from the rooftops, but the fact is that Arthur and Merlin are never, ever going to make out or have sex on the actual show. And there's a bitter part of me that thinks slash in fandom is so big because we will never have to see real gay relationships on our televisions. I've often taken part in the nudge-nudge-wink-wink "Look at The Gay! They are so in love!" shtick that does on, so I'm not entirely blameless, either, but I do realize that there is something a little bit wrong with our attitudes.

Because the truth is that gay people exist. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it needs to be said. We are here. We are in your fandom. We are in your schools, your apartment buildings, and your places of employment. We do not deserve to have the very essence of who we are fetishized as a lifestyle choice or entertainment by other people, including other LGBT people (because being "in group" is not an excuse). We deserve to be represented equally, in "real life" and in something as seemingly inconsequential as fan fiction. We will not settle for being viewed as "other," or outside of the norm, even when that norm includes other queer folk. We have a right to be able to go on the internet and read about ourselves as heroes, as lovers, as vanquishers of evil. Because honestly, I can count on one hand the television shows and mainstream fiction books where queer girls can read about themselves in a positive light. It is the nature of fan fiction to expand on original canon and/or change it for the people who love it the most. So what I'm asking you to do is think about that teenage girl somewhere who thinks she just might like other girls - and who has very limited resources to read about young women like herself - and expand this magical universe just a bit more to include her. Because let me tell you something: I was that girl. I know that a great many of you were that girl. 

There is a way to write slash and still be respectful. There is a way to write more Gwen/Morgana so that it doesn't seem shoehorned into the fandom. I'm confident that we can do it. 

We owe it to ourselves, right?

As of right now I am typing this entry on my brand new MacBook Pro in my living room (!). This is my first laptop and my first Mac, although I have used Macs a few times before in various video editing projects at school, etc. So far so good. I have already installed Microsoft Office for Mac, so I have at least one familiar program to work with. I am quickly catching on to several of the other little differences from PCs. I have also made a pact with myself to keep this computer much more organized and have separate folders for each class in college, etc. My only issues so far have been 1) THE TINY. Seriously, wtf, I can hardly read this shit as I'm typing, although the keyboard itself is large and glow-y and lovely. 2) I cannot figure out how to get a timeline view in iMovie. I have done it before on other Macs, but for some reason it is eluding me this time. 3) I didn't realize that my old iPod nano can't sync with this computer. As in, I can still listen to the music that is already on my iPod, but I can't get it from the iPod onto the new MacBook. And iTunes keeps bugging me to erase it, and I'm like, HELL NO, STFU ITUNES. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get new music from this laptop onto it without erasing, etc. So I am a bit confuzzled.

But all in all...LOVE. It is so fast and the monitor is STUNNING and *guh*. I already had a video chat with Sanne in the Netherlands this morning and enjoyed the great video quality and supreme lack of lag. Huzzah! Now to find some super cute Merlin or TB wallpaper...