shardsofblu

Title: Where There is Light
Music: VNV Nation
Fandom: Fringe, ensemble
Summary: In want of courage, it is as a shield for me.
Notes: Just something I made a while ago, right after last season ended. A little tribute to the show's enduring sense of hope, and home.

Stream @ youtube
Download 29MB .avi @ mediafire





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Title: Devotion
Music: Hurts
Fandom: North & South, ensemble
Summary: Here's hoping, you'll help me to be brave. You'll help me to resist.

Stream @ youtube
Download 29MB .avi @ mediafire





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Man, I'm just bad at this LJ thing. This will be probably my pattern from now on -- pop-in once in every few months and out again. :p So many thoughts, but simply unable to put in words.

Real life is just so... I wouldn't describe it as fulfilling yet, and this may sound so cliché but I'm just thankful have this chance to put myself back on track again.

Fandom-wise, I'm mellowing out. I've pretty much abandoned all the TV I used to and had planned to follow, except for Fringe, Luther & Downton Abbey. Tumblr & Twitter are still both mystifying and fascinating things to me. I have no idea what happens in the comics these days. I still love vidding. Rewatching my favorite episodes. Reading fanfics. Stalking reviews, forum posts here and there. Just the quiet stuff mostly.

I just have to mention Captain America: The First Avenger though -- I know, I know. Totally late to the party. But it's absolutely wonderful introduction to the character for me. So much heart, and it has everything I love and adore about the world of superheroes. Ngl, I'm waiting for The Avengers this year (alongside The Hunger Games, The Hobbit, TDK Rises) simply for Steve Rogers. I may come back just to share in the love. :)



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A list of my tv status so far, and I welcome your recs too. :)

( We have to believe that she will come back for us.Collapse )



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So like the promo says, Baseball Happened. I don't pretend to know exactly how did Texas Rangers losing the game resulted in Fringe getting postponed another week. But anyway. Let me talk about this show for a bit. :)

I've always adored Fringe, but by the end of the last season, it has gotten to the point that sometimes that I would even feel like I don't deserve this show. At the heart of all that universe-crossing, time-breaking & space-bending stuff, is a love story. A rich, quietly magnificent love story, borne with all the hard choices that come with it. People taking care of each other, reaching out, finding a sense of home, of letting go and coming back. Most importantly, the way hope is such a permeating element in the entire show. Olivia's desperate plea to AltBroyles in "Entrada" is one of those countless moments which encapsulates the show perfectly, and is quite possibly one of the most emotionally resonant scenes I've ever come across on television.

( This all began because a man came over here to save a boy and twenty-five years later, I came back to save that same boy.Collapse )



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*waves tentatively*

Hello again. :) I don't know if I even remember how to do these things anymore, but we'll see.



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Source: Wonder Woman
Characters: Diana of Themyscira, Hippolyta, Artemis, Alexa, Steve Trevor

Preview:



( I do not belong on this killing field, sister. I am no warrior.Collapse )



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This is still my #1 favorite book at the moment, and this issue has the sweetest moment of the week:



( Until me heard your ugly voice.Collapse )



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Source: Batman: Under the Red Hood
Characters: Bruce Wayne/Batman, Dick Grayson/Nightwing, Jason Todd/Robin/Red Hood

Preview:



( Nobody knows that better than me.Collapse )



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starry_dawn posted a poll a few days ago about your favorite characters in fandom to see if there's a pattern to them, and I'm indeed more inclined towards the good guys. I tend to see things from their POV first and defend it, compared to the villains and anti-heroes characters. But because all good stories are rarely black and white, it's very easy to remember when a hero is doing a bad thing, and when a villain is doing a good thing.

Taking the Silmarillion for example. Finrod and Maedhros are two of my very favorite characters there, but if I simply had to choose just one of them, I'm definitely with Team Finrod all the way. And yet even Finrod Felagund, Mr. Fairest and Most Beloved of the House of Finwë (I say this without sarcasm) is certainly not without his own instances of questionable integrity and decision-making -- i.e. his complicity in covering up the slaughter at Alqualondë from their brethren in Middle-earth (which also reminds me of characters like Atticus Finch and TDK Jim & Bruce), and leaving his own people and kingdom without any solid strategy during its most vulnerable state, in order to fulfill his oath made to Barahir.

( Let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.Collapse )



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I love when the comics and movies copy visuals from the show, and vice versa.

A scene from S/B: Apocalypse, when Clark drives Kara to Smallville:



They got it right down to that fascinating population number too.



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I love, love, LOVE every second of it! Everyone is just so completely badass and amazing and lovable. Clark and Kara and Diana and Bruce and Barda, the Furies, the Amazons... EVERYONE! The Kents at the end! ♥♥♥ And being the softy that I am, I got all teary-eyed at quite a few scenes too.

Hopefully I'll have more coherent and detailed gushing later. :) This movie totally deserves it and more.

( My ranking of the DCU animated movies so far.Collapse )



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1) Gandalf the vulture safely recovered.

2) In a true Instant Awesome Just Add Ninja fashion, group of real life ninjas coming to the rescue of a mugged student.

3) This picture:



I've seen it posted so many times, but never knew there was a story behind it. The boy wasn't posing for the photo, he was actually lost from his father during the Con. So he went up to the only people he trusted, Wonder Woman and the Flash. They stayed with him until he found his dad again. My Google-fu turned up the original anecdote here by the Flash himself.

4) ETA, courtesy of skund: Spider-Man foils a robbery and helps rescue an autistic kid, who was terrified on his first day at school.



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So this is going to my first DW-LJ crosspost. Let's see if I get everything all right. :)

Anyway, true to my namesake, I was a little too hasty in saying that I was going to delete this LJ. I completely forgot that tiny little detail of posting my own entries to your flists. *facepalm* All new entries will be crossposted here from Dreamwidth, although I'll still continue to keep the LJ comments disabled, and you can comment there at DW using your own DW account or OpenID. (ETA: Please validate an email address to your OpenID if you're using it for commenting, for reply notifications and to get rid of the Captcha.)

For those of you who are regularly updating at DW but don't consider it as your primary journal, I would really appreciate it if you could tell me in this post whether you'd like to me to follow and comment you on LJ or DW, so I can sort out my reading filters.

I've also got all of you who are staying on LJ with my OpenID account, which will be my reading list for LJ. If you'd like me to keep up with with your locked posts as well, just friend the account here: http://www.livejournal.com/friends/add.bml?user=ext_245386.



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I'm not going to wait until Sunday after all. If any of you is also considering a move there, here's a batch of invite codes:

1. 79XX3PCDHTMTBAAADVP5 - Use this code
2. QNYBNWQNNVXR7AAAJD3U - Use this code
3. 3Y4TXCCW5PHJFAAAJD3V - Use this code
4. J82B3G77XCQ9PAAAJD3W - Use this code
5. NSG75B6M8FZD5AAAJD3X - Use this code
6. 7B87TRR3WK2Y2AAAJD3Y - Use this code
7. 2CHABE4CCCCQCAAAJD3Z - Use this code
8. QCHEESH9ZBP5AAAAJD32 - Use this code

They also have a lot more codes here. Setting up at DW is easy as pie, and you can instantly import all your contents from LJ there -- entries, comments, tags, icons, custom groups etc. etc. And here's a terrific LJ-to-DW guide to help you along: How to Move from LJ to Dreamwidth in Six Easy Steps.

There a couple of drawbacks I've experienced on DW so far, but I think it's still worth it. One is the lack of a photo hosting service (the Scrapbook), and another is that the imported content feature doesn't apply to your embed videos -- you have to edit those posts and embed them again manually.

My username is quickbeam, so please add me there. I'll also be going around adding you guys. I'll delete shardsofblu after all the invited codes are finished.

I've been thinking about making a clean break from LJ for a while now -- there have been just too many privacy and ethical issues with it lately, and this has finally clinched that decision for me. Eventually I'll delete this LJ as well, but I'll keep it around until I've managed to transfer all my images on the Scrapbook to another hosting service.

I'll keep following you guys who are staying here on LJ using my OpenID account (http://quickbeam.dreamwidth.org), and if you'd still like to grant me access to your friends-locked entries, just add me back.

See you on the flip side. :)

Re: Facebook and Twitter Connect, Pingbacks

I've set up a dummy LJ (muchtoohasty) to represent myself and a Facebook account (Tin Eye) to represent a random commenter to see how it works:



So there you go. Tin Eye's comments that she had crossposted from both my public and friends-locked posts showed up on her Facebook Wall and News Feed. Sure, that friends-locked Facebook comment only provides a snippet of her comment, and the link back to the post. It won't display the contents itself, but my LJ address is already out there so easily for each and every one of her friends.

You bet if I'm one of Tin Eye's friends and saw this crossposted comment, I'd totally check out muchtoohasty's LJ and stalk it away, whether the entry linked itself was locked to me in the first place. If muchtoohasty is our mutual friend, it would only be a matter of time before I make the connection -- writing style, interests, favorite books etc.

I completely trust my flist not to ever repost their comments they've made here, and I wouldn't even dream of doing it to anyone else either. But that's not enough for me. I'm under no illusion that someone I know in real life could never come across and connect this LJ to me, but I've also tried my hardest to keep it that way. By encouraging and allowing anyone to do this Facebook crossposting, LJ has just completely destroyed whatever little control I have over ensuring that my RL and online life stay absolutely separate for as long as possible.

For now, I'm disabling the comments here and not making any more new posts. I'll be giving LJ time until Sunday to sort out this massive fail (which certainly isn't the first time either), if not I'll move completely to Dreamwidth.



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I'm finding myself forgetting details from SV more and more each day. Sometimes I see a cap or a quote or something about a guest/recurring character, and I just cannot place instantly which episode(s) they're from. It makes me sad in a way.

Speaking of details, I started rewatching TSCC last week (now up to "The Demon Hand") and there's something I had never, ever noticed before in "Dungeons and Dragons" regarding Derek, which could fundamentally change my opinion of his cold-blooded murder of Andy. He and Andy exchanged this nod with each other before John sent them back, and I can't help but see the implication that maybe it's Andy himself who had personally asked Derek to kill his past self anyway. Makes an interesting parallel -- John sends Kyle and Cameron and Arnie to protect him and Sarah, but Andy sends Derek to end his own life. Sort of a I Cannot Self Terminate example added with time travel, if you will.



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Bruce cannot do what he does without his masks. But once in a while, he literally takes them off to perfect strangers and it's a beautiful thing to behold.



( I'm just a man, a man who's trying to help.Collapse )



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My favorite thing about this scene is Zee's look of steely concentration as she conjured up the perfect popcorn.