Dear A.,

there are so many things that are wrong with you; if I were to list them all, I'd be here all week. So I'm just going to point out the few things that you keep doing that make me want to take a hit out on you.

( Read more... )

I've not even started to cover all the things I'd like you to change about who you are, but these are the basics, and these are the things that are sabotaging what could have been a fun project. Please take them into consideration next time you feel like being a dick, and don't be a dick.

No love,
M.

I'm caught up on Castle.

You know what this show desperately, desperately needs? An h/c plotline. And I'm not saying this as an h/c addict. Well, maybe I am, a bit, but. It's a show with a pulp-novel-y partner theme, right? They've got Starsky and Hutch and Mulder and Scully references every other episode. If you actually watch S&H and the X-Files, you know what those guys do every other episode? They get hurt, and they rescue one another. That's all they do, all the time. I'm not saying I want Castle to be the X-Files, but seriously. They're on their third season. Would it hurt them to have one finale plot end with Castle in the hospital? It would be funny! It would be adorable! It would be all I-don't-care-about-you-but-actually-I-do-please-don't-die, which is exactly what you want, if you're cultivating an antagonistic friendship between your two leads the way Castle is trying to do.

I was waiting for Lie to Me to do something with Emily. But, okay, I get it, Lie to Me tries to be a classy, CSI-ish procedural show. They don't want to go for the cheap emotional tricks. Castle isn't that kind of show. Castle is trying to be Starsky & Hutch. So why the hell is nobody getting hurt?

So. Comics.

( Cut for random rant. )

Anyway. I guess I'm asking if any of you have ever heard of/come across anything like this? I mean, I know there are a lot of people who just don't read comics for their own personal reasons, but that's not what I mean. I literally don't get them; I've tried, and it's not happening.

Today, I spent my morning shooting a two minute drama piece with a team of two other girls, and two actresses. Meaning we had a set entirely populated by members of the female population. We were shooting in the uni cafeteria, a pretty public place, and occasionally, people were walking past behind us.

It's around 12:30 pm, I'm setting up a shot, and am trying to frame it so I can get rid of a shadow I don't like. My sound operator waves to me--turn around, there's someone behind you. I turn around and find myself face to face with a shortish blond skinny dude.

( This conversation followed. )

By that point, my co-director and I just glared at him, and I think he finally got the message that his input was neither needed nor wanted, because he buggered off and left us alone. I have no idea what he was trying to do. I think he probably just saw a bunch of women handling filming equipment and figured that he'd play white knight and mansplain to us how to do it right. Whatever he was doing, I'm not sure whether I should be annoyed or amazed at him.

Usually it's fine, but from time to time, working with cameras and filming equipment, you realize how much the business still thinks it's entirely a male area. You've got boobs and you're holding a camera. Something's not right here.

Other than that, the shoot went well, though. Now all we have to do is edit it and hand it in! Win.

comment on LJ

Vidding is such a pain in the ass. I really don't know why I do it. Either you download the episodes, or you rip them. Ripping them takes forever. Downloading them is okay, but then you're probably going to end up with a set of episodes that have mismatching aspect ratios, frames per second, bitrates, codecs, and all the other shit that needs to match to make the vid look good. So you end up having to convert them all to one matching set of details. You need endless HD space to store all the episodes, you need some more HD space to be able to render in high quality, you either need a computer with an assload of memory, or a lot of patience while you render your vid every ten seconds to preview it (because without sufficient memory, the preview in the program lags, and it's impossible to see if it looks good or not)--and in the end, you're going to end up with something that looks maybe one tenth as good as it did when you saw it in your head.

I want one of those Power Macs they've got sitting in the editing suite at uni. Except I don't want to have to edit in Final Cut Pro, so I'd need a Mac version of Sony Vegas. Which doesn't exist. What pisses me off most is that the Macs in the editing suite won't write on my external HD, because it's formatted for Windows. Seriously? I mean, seriously? Wtf, Apple and Microsoft. You couldn't at least match up your HD formats? Macs can obviously read NTFS; how hard can it be to program them to write it? Compatibility is a good thing, believe it or not.

*throws hands in the air* TECHNOLOGY, PEOPLE. LET ME TELL YOU.

comment on LJ

Lol whut? Seriously?

ETA: Apparently they're gonna change it back with the next code push . . . but still. Way to be an ignorant asshat, LJ.

comment on LJ

( This is very, very ranty. As the subject line says, read at your own risk. )

ETA: Ahahahaha omg rereading this, I sound like the world's most spoiled brat. Creating my own problems, I'm doing it right. Never mind me. Have some diet cherry coke instead. *shares cherry coke*

comment on LJ

Things that need to die in a fire:

• Final Cut Pro. Liek whoa.
• People who change output settings on the public editing macs and don't change them back.
• The public editing macs.
• The server where the rushes are saved on, and the network connecting them.
• Anal-retentive tutors who want assignments rendered to tape. Who the fuck wants stuff rendered to tape anymore?
• The headache I've acquired since I started the hassle of trying to print my editing project onto tape.

MODERN TECHNOLOGY, LET ME TELL YOU. No, better don't. I wouldn't stop ranting. This clearly requires an image of baby bats. So, have an image of baby bats.



Also, the guys who are capturing their footage here are being very nice and helping me. I should mention that. Just for the sake of Zen and Karma balance and stuff.

comment on LJ

Can I just say that I'm fucking appalled at the horrible lack of spoiler etiquette running rampant in the Doctor Who and Torchwood fandom the past couple of days? How fucking hard is it to remember to cut, ( Spoilers for Torchweek. )

comment on LJ

If something means something to you, it's valid. You don't have to justify having/doing it, not to anybody. It doesn't have to make money, or be "useful", or be considered acceptable by society. If it means something to you, every-fucking-body better had to respect that. If they don't, it's not you who's wrong. It's them.

People buying into this whole "level of success" = "a person's value" bullshit makes me spit. It creates issues and ruins brilliance left, right, and center, and society still promotes it. All because a few assholes think they need to make themselves look better at the expense of others, and are having fun brainwashing everyone into thinking that this is the way to do it. Well, fuck that.

The issue that caused this outburst has been resolved, and this has nothing to do with it. It's just a general announcement of RAGE about an old, old issue of mine. Peace, everyone.

comment on LJ

I was actually going to make a squee post about Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords, because I just watched it with lf2871, and fucking hell, I do love the scriptwriting and the soundtrack and just the whole thing, because it's one freaking brilliant finale.

BUT. Then I went into the kitchen to find a corkscrew, and stepped into the middle of a discussion about why it's deeply wrong when a man touches another man's ass. And was asked my opinion.

I came out to the guy and ended up shouting at him. I was told that homosexuality is wrong because the creator said so. Then he began to start every sentence with "people like that", and I interrupted him and went, "say 'you', because you're talking to me". And he was like "I don't judge people. The creator does." And, no, I didn't kill him, but I really wanted to.

PEOPLE AND THEIR RELIGION. It's frustrating/hilarious/flail-and-cry-worthy all at the same time. Well, I'm not going to be interacting with him anymore, I guess.

Best thing? He's a PoC. You'd think he'd know better.

comment on LJ

Okay, so this script-writing assignment? It's really giving me a headache.

First, the tutor wanted me to write the treatment before the script. I don't outline. I rarely do it with fic, and I can't do it with original fic at all because I don't know my characters before I start writing. It's not how I approach fiction; plot first, narration later. Doesn't work for me. Luckily, he was alright with me handing in the treatment together with my first draft.

Then, the theme is "home". Okay, I can live with that theme, but could it not have been something a little more interesting? "Death" or "family" or "faith". "Home"--it's so student-y. Oh, those poor first year guys, they just left home, let's give them an assignment where they can write about that. Blah blah blah.

The worst thing though? It can only be 10 pages long. Now, if you're used to writing fic, that sounds like a lot (or, you know, a reasonable length for telling a story), but with writing a script, it's different. We're using the typical script format, and in that format, you write a couple of lines of dialog and the page is full.

I've started two scripts now. With the first one, I got as far as introducing two of my four main characters before I realized I was already on page four and hadn't even started the plot yet. With this second one now, I've just done the exposition scene, and yeah, I'm once again on page four already. I'm going to stick with this plot now, anyway, but seriously--introducing your characters and developing a plot in ten pages? That's sort of a joke. I mean, TV show script writers have 45 pages and they can skip the exposition bits, and they're usually still writing as concisely as possible to squeeze their plot into the allotted time slot.

/raeg

*goes back to writing that script*

Indulging my strange random Tim Roth obsession, I just watched Youth Without Youth, Coppola's most recent film. I usually wouldn't touch a movie like that with a ten-foot-pole; I know it'd only make me go B|, but, you know. Being fannish demands some sacrifices.

( So, yeah. It did make me go B|. (No spoilers. This is really more a rant on pretentious directors.) )

Oh, and for the record? Fill-in-the-gaps scriptwriting can be taken too far. B|

So, I'm in South England, and as the whole world already knows, IT SNOWED HERE OMG.

Two centimeters. That's not quite an inch. These scary amounts of frozen water made everything stop. Uni, people, everything.

Let's start at the beginning. I got up at 7am, because I had a class scheduled for 9am. The internet worked for exactly long enough to let me find out that nope, uni won't be canceled today. (Monday was snow day. Tuesday had more snow, but it was not a snow day. Idgi either.) Then the internet died, and I trudged into uni, only to find out that, yeah, no, even though it's not a snow day, people decided not to come in anyway.

Alright, whatever. I didn't go back home, because other than the internet at the residences, uni internet is not weather dependent. I hung out at uni till 5pm, spending most of that time writing a completely tl;dr backstory on my Ten pup. Then they kicked me out. Apparently, when it snows, everything has to close at 5pm. So I went back home, and since there was no fog or snow or anything, I was hoping that maybe the internet might be working.

It wasn't. This was pissing me off. I hadn't had proper internet all weekend. Monday night, when my internet was working, my RP partner's internet wasn't. I have about three or four different 'verses that I want to pursue, and I didn't get a warning that I wouldn't have proper internet for the next four or five days, so I couldn't get used to the idea. Now, her internet was working, but mine wasn't. I decided to watch a movie, and the DVD died half-way through.

At that point, I was just completely frustrated, so I went and bought some wine and popcorn, emptied the bottle within less than an hour, and went to bed. (Is this where I admit to having a problem? It was less that I didn't have the internet. It was more that I didn't get a warning. It's easier to deal with no internet when you get a warning.)

Anyway. The internet's back now! Let's see how long it'll stay that way. Meme in the meantime! Stolen from choukoumei.

Name the first 10 fandoms that come into your mind. Your flist is supposed to write which character from those fandoms you're most alike according to them. It's about the character you're most alike, not the one you like the most!

01) Doctor Who
02) Life on Mars
03) House
04) Star Trek
05) Merlin
06) Buffy
07) Due South
08) Sherlock Holmes
09) The X-Files
10) Spaced

If you don't know the show, you can skip it, obviously. :)

Oh, and this? This pisses me off.

That's as if I were to play a muse who's an ex-KKK member and then went on a RP comm and said, "now, guys, who else plays an American muse?"

DIAF, asshole.

I realize that the mun probably didn't mean any harm with their post and suggestion of a comm for "German muses", but... that's volumes of ignorance speaking there. And it bugs me.

Today, Period 2 of my first year has started.

Well, actually it started yesterday, but I have every other Monday off, and yesterday was an every other Monday. So, today. My time table said that I had a class at 9 am, which I discovered last night around 1am. Oh well, I went to bed around 4 and dragged myself out of bed around 8. I arrived more or less on time for my 9 am lesson... only to discover that no-one else did, aside from me, my tutor, and J. the Emo Fringe Guy. (We were supposed to be 20 people in that class.)

Alright, so I went back home. I considered sleeping, but what with the tutor having kept us in uni for about an hour in the hope that people might show up, and with the fact that according to my time table, my next lesson would be at 2 pm, I decided not to go sleep. So I whiled away the time till my next lesson, and went back into uni.

And guess what? Yeah. The class is not at 2, but at 4. Presumably. Because at 2, seminar group 2 is supposed to be having that class in that room. They weren't; when I got there, seminar group 2 was just finishing up, and seminar group 4 was waiting in front of the door to get in and start their class. It's a two-hour class, which is why I presume seminar group 5 - my group - would be scheduled for 4.

But you know what? Fuck you, uni people. If you can't sort out your time tables, you shouldn't be surprised if people don't show up. My class at 4 is being taught by Pretentious Mac Prick, and it's on building websites with Dreamweaver, which will make me want to kill kittens anyway. So for the sake of my sanity, I decided to skip.

On the bright side, I bought shoes. Wooh! :D They look kind of like these. (Not really, but it's the closest I could find.)

Sorry to spam... but I have to rant.

This morning, I had the most pointless, ridiculous and infuriating lecture in the history of mankind. It was supposed to be about networking and web 1.0 and web 2.0, and it was just - no. Seriously.

( Cut for ranting. )

I think I will link this entry in my bookmarks, and whenever I feel the urge to go to a lecture, I'll re-read it and then go back to bed.

I'm quite a forgiving person. I love discussions, but I don't like fighting or bearing grudges. But the more I think about what people got up to today, the more I feel like setting the uni on fire and watching it burn to the fucking ground.

( You think you've seen fail? Think again. )

Jesus fucking H. Christ, I feel like I'm in kindergarten.

So, I'm meant to do this presentation with two other people. Three other people, actually, but the third person showed up exactly once and did exactly nothing. So now we're doing it as a three people group. We were meant to meet up today to compare what each of us had found on their allotted topic so far, and put together a basic running order.

( Read my tale of WOE. )

In other news, no news. Need to do Nano. Later... xD