zvi likes tv

Stance on Warnings

So, Elliot Spitzer, while governor of New York, made some weird-looking financial transactions which led to the revelation that he was a regular customer of an illegal prositution business and violated the Mann act by hiring a prostitute to meet him in D.C. This led to his resignation.

As any regular viewer of Law & Order can tell you, Law & Order loves to rip its storylines from the headlines. And this sort of scandal is exactly the sort of story which will lead to a disclaimer presented at the beginning of the episode involved, which amounts to: we totally made this up, it’s 100% fictional, we’re so not talking about anything that actually happened. (This is the third most awesome Law & Order disclaimer.)

So, latxcvi and I were talking about Elliot Spitzer and Law & Order, and how sad we are that Jesse L. Martin is leaving the show, and pondering if Spitzer would be the season finale story or the season premiere story. And we told ourselves the awesome following story. ( Read more... )

sidewinder. I'm glad I've finally settled on the idea of buying presents from her, because I love browsing her jewelry and selecting it, even if I don't wear jewelry. Her stuff is gorgeous and it deserves to be bought. She's also doing these cute little brightly colored bracelets, just plastic beads on some sort of stretchy material for $1. Those I am willing to buy and wear for the two weeks before I lose them.

Lunch was with Brak. The company was good, but the hotel restaurant managed to slaughter a margherita pizza. You wouldn't think a plain pizza with basil would be destroyable but they:

1. Had too much basil
2. Had too little tomato sauce
3. Managed to overcook the pizza so the cheese was too brown and the fat was pooling up from it, while at the same time not burning it

The first panel I went to on Saturday was the Story Plotting Game. That was actually more fun than I was expecting it to be. We only had time for two rounds, but they were great rounds. amedia and a woman named Carol (whose LJ name I didn't catch if she has one, and if someone has hers, please give it to me, she was cool) aka meritahut led it because the person who was supposed to do it couldn't make it. Anyway, the first round was us taking 5 minutes to write out a generic plot, then exchanging plot cards, and taking 10 minutes to write out a story based on the generic plot. In the second round, everyone used the same plot. amedia said she would put them up on the con website (or her website?) and then you will be able to see the cool stuff people came up with. I will post mine to this livejournal in a separate post. my stories from the story plotting game

The Stargate Atlantis general discussion panel was fun, but not terribly memorable. It was nice to be in a room with a lot of people who are genuinely fond of the show, though. The roommate dislikes it is underwhelmed and the other people I know are h8trs. They mock with love, but they're still, you know, mocking.

Then I went to a panel on Incorporating Technology Into Fanfic. All I have to say about that is to apologize once again to everyone I dragged to the panel. It's not that the panel was bad, but the description wasn't very clear and if we had known what it would be, we would not have gone. Just not that interested in the subject matter.

<digression>The same people ran a panel on Strong Women Characters that was a disaster. I think we were just dealing with a generational disconnect. They had issues where people faulted women for being unrealistically strong. Fans of my generation seem more likely to complain that a female character isn't strong enough, sometimes in situations where they wouldn't blame a male for similar behavior, and sometimes where the character isn't strong enough. Also, a panelist who wouldn't shut up about her own life story made it all the more fun.</digression>

My second panel of the con went very well, but it was poorly titled. I intended it to be a panel questioning whether the John/Rodney uber alles of the fic was really born out by the canon, but the title "John/Rodney – Most Popular? Most Canonical?" was somewhat deceptive. Also, I ran out of material about halfway through the panel. However, we did amass a nice list of authors who have written non-McShep fanfiction.
Recommended not!McShep SGA authors
James Walkswithwind zortified / McShep + Beckett
Hth hth_the_first / Sheppard/Dex and McKay/Dex
Bone thisisbone / Sheppard/Dex
brighidestone / Rodney/Teyla
Mice / McKay/Beckett
Basingstoke basingstoke / Team fic (Ronon-style), Dex/Sheppard
Shallot astolat / McKay/Beckett
Tigerlady / John/Rodney/Teyla
Julad julad / McKay/Zelenka
??? ETA: rosewildirish / McKay/Zelenka series where Zelenka's nickname is Carrot and there's an issue with McKay and a music room that plays one's personality
Tafkar tafkarfanfic / McKay/Teyla/Sheppard
ltlj / Retrograde WIP gen
kylielee1000 / Beckett/Halling *added from comments on this post
Trinity of One / Daemonology Actually, this is McShep

If you have websites or lj names for any of the above, please let me know.

( Later Saturday night )

( Sunday )

del.icio.us is a fantastically useful bookmarking tool. Not only does it allow you to bookmark, annotate, and tag (as opposed to using folders), it allows you to see other people's bookmarks. It's very simple to get started and you can even send your friends links if you know their del.icio.us usernames. I am zvi_likes_tv. If you are on del.icio.us, let me know your username.

( The rest of Sunday )

Anyway, I had a really excellent time at the convention. Monday I spent all damn day assigning people Santas and recipients for 3_ships. And I said to myself I wouldn't read LJ until after I'd finished my con report, so I can now read LJ for the first time since 10 a.m. on Thursday. By my calculations, I should be somewhere around skip=240, which isn't but so awful. However, if there's something you think I must know about, comment on this post.