Just when I expected that I knew all the esoteric sexual practices fandom could throw at me: figging.

COMMUNITY these days seems kind of disappointing and bleh? I mean, yay for new episodes! Yay for the show attempting to survive, because the cast of Community have been my happy place for a good while now, but I feel like the last couple episodes have not taken us to any place new or unexpected. And there's been a weird focus on Jeff doing things off screen or being the center of the show in a way that doesn't feel natural at this point in the series' development. Where are the sharp edges?

-Bullet points!

-Saw Hunger Games. Deeply impressed.

-Got clawed by cat. Not impressed. Cat phobia continues. Constant vigilance!

-Saw new Community episode! Deeply impressed by show's ability to shove itself up its own ass.

-Spent some of this day working on job acquisition. Feeling better now.

-This week has all the holidays.

So, once upon a time in a fairly modern alternate universe,
Into every generation is born a slayer, one girl in all the world, the chosen one, who will lead her kingdom in to peace and prosperity with the dueling powers of the Californians kingdoms.

Regent Giles, sent from the Council on Kingship, is the appointed tutor and steward of the small kingdom of Summerlands, ruling justly while also preparing Her Royal Highness Buffy of the House of Summers, princess and lady of battle, to be a just ruler and queen. Raised in a normal household and illegitimate, Buffy didn't know her father until he died without an heir, leaving her as the last in the line of Summers and stuck in a life she does't want. She enters the court to meet Count Alexander of Harris, the bumbling son of a defunct noble family with pretensions to lost grandeur and power, and Lady Willow, the daughter of a recently established noble family (one of the first Jewish families appointed to nobility by the late king) and a powerful witch in her own right, tho she could stand to get out of the house more rather than training so much.


blarg blarg- ruling is the burden, instead of being a slayer...


The Summerlands are menaced by the Aurelian Dynasty, a longstanding territory ruled by the Vampires of the Aurelieus clan. In the war, the anti-human Master and his childe, Darla. This leaves Angel, the Vampire with a soul, trying to sort out the local squabbling and keep his kingdom from turning into a bloodbath. The bad kind. The main problems are Drusilla and Spike. Drusilla is a political tool and can never be trusted to rule on her own, but her visions are valuable to Angel. Spike, however, is a menace. He's rowdy as hell since Drusilla dumped him, makes a complete mess of Angel's poor planning for political reasons, and generally is a Problem for Angel to deal with.

Angel can't wait to get rid of him, and since he's not the official heir to Aurelieus with Drusilla live, Angel can wed Spike, and his gobs of vampiric lucre, off to a high ranking noble in the Summerlands to make the peace treaty stick.

Giles thinks it's lamentable but necessary, Willow is aghast, Buffy is just glad it's not HER, and Xander is mostly trying to get over the fact that his father knew he was gay the whole time.

Basic RED on shorter nails

Nail polish: Sephora by OPI - High Maintenance (opaque bright orange red), $9.50 at Sephora**

This is the first time I have trimmed my nails this short in a long while, and I went with a very basic and classic color to highlight the shape and length of them. Compared to the last two, this is very simple, and I picked it to let myself get used to the idea that short nails can also be classy and glamorous.

I have been trying to grow my nails out for several months now- basically since July. I've had a long history as a nailbiter, more due to boredom and the way having any nail growth at all felt ~weird~ and wrong to someone used to having no nails at all beyond the nailbed itself. I wasn't really able to think about growing out my nails until this summer, because I felt like I never had the time to learn how to do this properly.

I got my nails done professionally for a big giant event this summer (in fact, I got them done about three times in the course of womanly bonding and prep for the actual day of the event) and I found it really, really helpful! *

But because my nail polish use started as a means to master my quest for Longer, Less-Bitten Nails, I really didn't like to cut them at all. I filed and shaped them (squarish for one experiment, very oval for the French Manicure experiment in last post), but I really let them grow out, and it worked really well!

The nail beds, which were formerly quite far down on my finger from all my abuse, have slowly moved their way back up the finger to something that looks more normal for most people. My nails are growing stronger because they have a stronger base, and they break less.

So today, I decided that my long nails had accomplished their task for now, and I filed my nails down a fair bit. Not quite to the quick, because that is still rather far down on my nails, but just enough that I can now make a real good punching fist without stabbing through my palms.

I have to say that I like the look of longer nails better on my hands- it's rather elegant and I think it makes my rather small hands look a big more proportionate.

But they are getting in the way of my personal life, so for now, I will be experimenting with shorter nails and how to make them look awesome without growing them out longer than I can handle.

( *Digression: ON THE USEFULNESS OF PROFESSIONAL MANICURES: )


**I'm going to try and make sure to post where you can buy this polishes in the future, especially for things that are not basic drugstore brands in the US.


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NAIL MYTH SURVEY: In the comments, darlings.

My darling husband says that filing one's nails, as opposed to cutting them with clippers, makes the nail grow back thicker and stronger.

Have any of you heard of this story? Do you put any truth to it? Comment below!

I've never heard of it and I think this is bullshit on the level of saying that shaving your legs makes the hair grow back thicker- it cuts off the tapered part of the hair and makes it more rough to the touch, but shaving cannot change the genetically determined level of hairiness of your legs.

If you find a man that's worth and damn and treats you well,
then he's a fool,
it's just as well,
Hope it gives you hell.

The last few months had been hell. The tours, the late nights, the constant travel were bad enough before she realized, no, she couldn't keep up with the band. The thrill of being backstage faded when it was where you were every single night, when she just wanted to sleep some nights without having to worry about whether one of the other guys was going to try bringing someone back to the bus and forget which bunk she was in.

Dammit, she'd been trying. Her degree was done and his band as suddenly huge, so it had seemed like a good plan, a great adventure even, to follow him around the country on their first big tour. She'd missed him the first time, and he'd come back with a fucking tattoo on his neck, and it. was. fine. Because for the first time he was really incredibly happy. The work was so important to him, and he was just bursting with energy. They'd recorded the next CD in a two-week blur and he'd written eight more songs for the one after, and some of them were really, really good.

Couldn't she just be happy for him? Be happy with him?

She's been trying so hard. But the next tour took them both away from home for months, and while she'd met great, amazing people, half of them still didn't remember her name by the end of the run. She was still "The Girlfriend" to a lot of people, and it got old fast. And she'd tried to step up for herself, especially when the other guys in the band had noticed it too, and things got better for a little. But then they went right back to not paying that much attention to her when the stress got too high again.

She knew she had to be her own advocate here. It's not like she got a pre law degree based on sitting down and shutting up in class- she'd fought her way to the top just like the rest of them had in college. But no one had her back here, it seemed, and went she finally got tired of it she could still hear them talking about her in the back of the bus when they thought she was asleep.

So she'd applied for a few internships without asking him his plans, and when one came through, a really good one, a firm with the kind of nonprofit background she'd wanted and a decent family leave policy and a really kickass history in the community, she'd knew she couldn't back down. And they'd kissed goodbye and made promises and tried to call regularly. The next tour went off without her and honestly, it had been really really great, not to have to pack up and leave the world behind.

She knew some of the other guys had fucked around on their girlfriends on tour, and the money had changed the dynamics, for some shitty reason. The other girlfriends (a rotating crew sometimes) tended to put up with it in a way she'd never have done, and while she respected him for that a lot, for not putting her through that, when he'd call and talk to her about the chances he could have taken and didn't, because he loved her, it felt like he wanted to be rewarded for it. It left a bad taste in her mouth- was she supposed to thank him? for not hurting her like that? He was supposed to love her.

She hadn't believed the tabloids that put him in bed with that slender brunette. He called her to beg her to believe him, but she already did, and he acted like it was a great gesture on her part, but really, she just thought the papers were stupid. He seemed almost disappointed that she wasn't angrier, and that felt like a bad sign, but she called it a win.

When he called one evening, she picked it up after fishing her phone out from under a pile of yellow legal pads. He wanted to take a break, and while she was concerned, she was having a blast and she really didn't have the time to hunt him down halfway across the world and find out what about Japan had made him change his mind about them.

It was kind of sad, but he seemed resolved, so she let it go and they'd talk about it when he came home in a few weeks.

Then the next set of photos came out, with a different girl, and there was no mistaking it this time. A reporter called her and asked what was going on, and she told him that they were on a break, and she saw the quote in a follow-up piece on some blog, and that's when she got the second call.

"Why wouldn't you fight for me? Why wouldn't you get mad at me? I'm fucking cheating on you, dammit! Why don't you get mad?" He'd been drunk, and slurring, and the logic was just insane. He'd wanted out, but really he wanted her to fight for him? When he hadn't wanted to even talk about it? When he'd been gone for the better part of two years being a rock star? When he didn't even notice that she couldn't sleep in a bus for another summer?

She hung up and went back to her life, the one where she mattered and people respected her and the people using the insane logic were the ones on the other side of the courtroom, and you could at least try to beat them.

When the single had come out, she hadn't bought it, but the dedication had shown up online in a few hours. "Here's to you, bitch."

Charming.

The song talked about her choosing something else over him, and how he hoped it would torture her later, every time she saw his face, and it just sounded bitter, but it sounded like him. Honestly, it really did sound like him. So she took her phone off the hook for a couple evenings, filtered her email a bit better, and basically ignored it. How many time was he going to pick something else over her and then blame her for it later? She'd lost count. She was done.

And if it went down in pop history that he'd been dumped by her, who was she to care? She knew what happened, and it's not like it was ever going to come up in a job interview.

I finished "Once Upon A Time" yesterday afternoon.

I've been rewatching since.

I think I'm doomed. Honestly, truly, madly, doomed.

SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE.

I am feeling depressed and kind of mean. I am not working, and I haven't found a job yet. Which, by the way, is ridiculous to be angry about! Because I've been trying for about 2 weeks, most of which have been dealing with immigration and the aftermath of moving and graduating from a really reall really ridiculously difficult school.

I don't even have the RIGHT to feel annoyed at this point. Because it's really functionally not been very long at all. And it was foolish of me to be upset in the first place, because I have a place to leave and money and someone who works to provide both of us with these things. So I don't have the right to be depressed.

But I feel like I don't have a purpose anymore, when I used to have something that ate up my days and made me feel valuable and good at something. I have nothing to pin my ego on except my housework, and it just grates against me to let my brain make the comparison. But it's making it without my permission. And I really rather suck at housework.


I just... I had expected to have a job by now. I had expected to be doing something related to my main goal career right now. And I'm not, and that kind of sucks.

While at the same time I feel completely ashamed at being so at sea about it, because many many people have it much much much tougher than I do, and manage to do something amazing and support themselves. It's just. I haven't learned how to do that yet. And I hate not knowing how to do something.


So, pardon my self indulgence- I will be getting off my butt and making contact with people, and getting out and having a life and deciding to do cool things. But I needed to wallow aloud a bit first.

Watching: Miss Marple. For she is awesome.

BUT.  I am in a situation, friends! For I have lost my fanvids.  My computer, stalwart though she is, had a major harddrive problem, which meant that I've got a new harddrive.  I didn't lose any of my important files- things like my taxes and my travel plans are all still there.There's only one problem.

I didn't back up my fanvids.

I've lost nearly all of them- the one with the Cylons to the Coldplay song, the Supernatural one that involves the line about having flippers, the random Highlander one that involved Methos (who is the only Highlander character I can actually recognize) and how he is like a cat, the one that actually introduced me to Lady Gaga via Spock and Kirk.

And I need them back, friends.

Can you help me find awesome fanvids again? Post your favorites, and I will follow them and be happy.

Today: write a paper, study Croatian

Tomorrow: finish the paper, take final exam in Croatian

Thursday: sleep

Friday: Party- grades are in and I'm graduating! FOREVER!

Saturday and Sunday and Monday and Tuesday: Glorious nothing. And Finding a Job.

Wednesday- Friday: Shepard my family about.

Saturday: Get my FUCKING MASTER'S DEGREE

Sunday: Family leaves

June 11-31: Find a Job. Pack.

July 1: Move into the new apartment. (Which is pretty!)

July 3rd: Fly home to get married. Try on dress. Do not forget shoes, tiny ninjas, clothing.

July 4th: Country's Birthday. Get Country something nice. Socialized medicine? A proper Presidential candidate?

July 5th: Wedding Rehearsal

July 7th: Wedding

July 8th: Recover from wedding. Honeymoon for a bit.

July 9th-14th ish- San Francisco. Flowers in hair. Wine. Fine tress and sea otters. Snuggles.

July 15thish- get back to Chicago. Have life. Find Job.

etherati is a prolific writer in the the Watchman fandom (I recommend zir zombie AU Now, as Before.


There's been a death in the family,and the resulting shakeout leaves no money for a family member who now needs more significant care for her dementia. Zie's asking for financial help.

From the post itself:

I don't usually ask for help, but this time I don't have any choice. Two weeks ago, my SO's father killed himself, suddenly and unexpectedly and, even now, for no reason any of us can figure out. I've just spent those two weeks in New Jersey trying to help them sort out the legal and financial affairs, and we're both completely shellshocked and devastated here on top of all the procedural crap. Here's the rundown of financial facts:

-There's no life insurance
-The house is under water and on a reverse mortgage (more on this further down)
-The 401K's have all been drained
-$10,000 in back taxes owed
-There is no money, at all

On top of this, his widow has been mentally deteriorating for years now and can neither live alone nor can live with any of her children, none of whom have the space or are there all day to provide her the care she needs. The trauma of this event--she was there when it happened, in the house, trying to stop him--has accelerated her decline dramatically and she needs professional care. However, in most states her social security income is both woefully inadequate to pay for care and too high to qualify her for aid, because hey, I guess in the good ol' USA old ladies with dementia are also supposed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, idek. I would be more furious if I had the energy for it.

Links to Paypal for donation at the end of the original post. Fandom, what can we do?