Two recommendations:

1. Echo Bazaar: Timesuck, or excellent timesuck? I am an intriguing and observant lady, an admirer of art and beauty, a little heartless, magnanimous, melancholy and hedonistic. I'm connected with the Bohemians and the Church, and I'm searching for a card game where I can play for my heart's desire with the stake my soul. I'm the protégé of a mysterious benefactor, I'm having recurring dreams and intense nightmares, I'm seducing a honey-sipping heiress and a young jewel thief, I'm trying to immortalize prisoner's honey and Jack of Smiles in verse, and everything I just listed is an actual stat in the game.

2. A little over one day left to register for Yuletide! If you need an AO3 invite, I have one left.

In response to a complaint I have seen floating around about how people are allowed to like whatever they want to like and shouldn't be badgered into liking characters out of their type just because they're marginalized (...uh), and also in response to the attitude that it's so hard to like ladies because it's hard to find good ones, and in the spirit of the last time I did this:

THE FEMALE CHARACTER YENTA MEME

IN NO WAY STARTED BECAUSE EMMA DOESN'T WANT TO STUDY FOR HER MIDTERM
BUT SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS DO IT

Why: You know what you like. Let us come to you.

How: Comment with a description of your favorite character and/or pairing kinks. If you only want certain media (television, books, movies, RPF, comics...) feel free to specify. Sit back and wait for lovin'!

AND/OR

Comment on other people's descriptions with female characters or at-least-one-woman-including-ships who fulfill their character and/or pairing kinks. Rec fics, vids, and fanart if you can. Picspam if you want to.

Two ground rules:

1. The women in question don't have to be unproblematic, or from unproblematic media, or the main characters, or your favorite character, or popular, or unique. You just have to feel they should be recced.

2. Female in this case means "self-identifies as female, to some extent, at some point in their canon"; they don't have to primarily identify as female, or use female pronouns. Obviously trans women count, because ... they are women, but I want to be clear that genderfluid and genderqueer people with a female identity component are cool too. Genderswap fic about people who are canonically cis dudes isn't appropriate for this meme though.

An example (that is a true story): nextian: I like women who are ice-blooded, check it and see, they've got a fever of I Will Goddamn End You, who ideally has weird family relationships, but isn't the villain.
bookelfe: General Olivier Armstrong from Fullmetal Alchemist!

And then: Well, in a dream world, you'd make the fics or the arts about it and then the world will be filled with flowers, sunshine, unicorns, and daisies. In this world, you can just go away secure in the knowledge that there is something out there for everyone.

HAVE AT IT.

JSYK, I access-locked the post I made yesterday -- I mean, if you were graced with its brilliance and all, it's still true and everything, but ... I don't know, for some WEIRD REASON I feel a little silly making a big public stink about pretty much the only thing that it is occasionally mediocre about being me when on the by and large things are pretty okay I think. Like: I opened an envelope a few days ago to find that Ji had sent me a peekture, of which I will take photos when I get it framed. Like: despite the soulcrushing nature of my current job, there are always the little gifts like the guys who write letters essentially consisting of "I have some civil rights laying around here somewhere, but I lost them. Can you help?" Like:

The Wimbledon death match liveblog, which is a masterpiece of desperate hilarity in the face of sports that never end. I may be the last to see it, but I stand proud and alone.

The One Where The Fire Nation Clearly Loses, by miarr, which is Zuko/Sokka. BOYCOTT THE FILM ahem I mean. Man, am I late to this party, but I brought enough for everyone! He’d leap back in revulsion and unadulterated horror, but then Zuko would be free to sauté him. Death, or coming in contact with an aroused Firebender? His life is full of impossible decisions.

Like: the Big Damn Heroes ladyficathon, still ongoing, now showing on both screens: DW and LJ.

Some stuff written for me:
road to el dorado; chel; as the multitudes exalt by bossymarmalade. For the prompt "caught between siamese cities". It didn't take long for them to try it out, because Tulio couldn't stop himself from staring hungrily from one to the other on mornings (he had this thing about mornings) when they'd stumble from their individual shelters, rumpled vulnerable hair and sleepy skin soft with oil. Could this be any hotter? No.
Wendy Watson; Rattle My Brain by gloss. For the prompt "goodness, gracious, great balls of fire." "Good gravy, children play there! With ever-rising rates of childhood obesity, we need all the outside play areas we can get!" He dropped, rolled, and sprang up on the other side of the robot's foot. With his free hand, he pointed at Wendy. "You're still out of uniform. Uggs and droopy lady boxer-briefs are hardly appropriate for --" Could this be any more perfectly Middlefic? No.
JSMN, Arabella Strange, At the Station by nataliadarimini. For the prompt "on the day we were supposed to leave you changed your mind at the station." Arabella is very much of this world, no matter how much time she's spent in another.
iron man; pepper/natasha; all the work. For the prompt "she fucks like she fights." Pepper thinks about giving Tony neck rubs, about massaging aches out of his hands when he was too drunk to remember to tell her to go home, and thinks maybe she shouldn't care too much that Natasha's hands are on her. That maybe the change in her position comes with adjustment in perception -- the things she's allowed to have.

Some stuff not written for me:
sally sparrow; we'll be their storybook heroes by finkpishnets
willow and buffy; midnight in the garden of good and evil by chaletian
arcadia; thomasina and hannah; Till Lethe quench life's burning stream, by chaletian

Some stuff written BY me: I like one of them better than the other, GUESS WHICH. No, don't. iron man; pepper/natasha; succexy and kkbb; harmony lane; pearls are a nuisance.

Today started off terribly, when at first I couldn't get myself out of bed and shaven and clean for my grandmother's headstone placement, and then I got to the airport and drove around for half an hour, increasingly worried about my mother who wasn't picking up, and then ... I called home and heard her voice. Turns out the placement is tomorrow, and I continue to be perhaps not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

But then I drove home and ate my homemade ice cream, and spent hours on this blog Letters of Note. It's what it says on the tin; guy compiles letters that are notable because interesting, or sad, or funny, or famous, or scary. It made me want to start leaving documentary evidence again. I'd only read, I think, three before -- the Jack the Ripper letter, the Disney-to-women-illustrators letter, and this letter from Groucho Marx to T. S. Eliot. The rest of the correspondence is similarly charming, trust me, and you can find it in The Essential Groucho. "So, when I call you Tom, this means you are a mixture of a heavyweight prizefighter, a male alley cat and the third President of the United States."

Then there are letters like the one where a kid sends some helpful advice to the Woomera Rocket Range, or the several in which young women complain about how the government is keeping Elvis and the Beatles down (they all end with "if you don't do [x] I will just die." A lot of people write back. Kennedy is apparently hilarious. Stephen Fry is shockingly wonderful even for Stephen Fry. Dr. Seuss encourages a kid to keep drawing ... and the kid becomes a comics artist. Isaac Asimov is a gentleman. Mark Twain rips a patent medicine peddler a new one; Mark Twain disses the telephone.

And then there's this one.

( that photomosaic meme under the cut )

Here are some things that do not make me happy right now:
* Israel Zangwill's weird antifeminist feminism.
* How much I identify with Amy Levy.

So here are some things that do make me happy right now:
* OK Go's bizarre musical experiment.
* OK Go's ordinary music.
* Talib Kweli. My tour through his music is going very slowly because I can only listen to about three lines before I have to pause the song and claw at my face out of love. He is such a giant nerd.
* Fanlore as rec finder.
* No, seriously, Fanlore is the best at this.
* I mean, I'm finding fic I never knew I wanted.
* Ahem. Anyway.
* White Sun of the Desert, despite its terribleness; it's hilarious, seriously. Note to those of you who like history, the best solution by far is not to specialize in your favorite topic yourself but to have a biffle who does and get her to give you key excerpts from this experience. This way, you only have to argue about Hadji Murad once, but you get to make Russian jokes all the time.
* Extended deadlines on homework.

eta: now with all links functional, captain.

At schiarire's request...

Reasons To Be Happy

1. Caramel lattes. If you have had one, you know what I am talking about. It's one of those chemical inducements to joy that for some reason isn't illegal. I also feel this way about pumpkin spice.

2. The seventh circle of hell in the Inferno. This is the one with the violence -- the first subcircle is boring, but then you get the wood of the suicides, which is just heartrendingly beautiful, and the violent against God and art and nature, which includes of course the sodomites who gave into their urges (Every time I type that word I want to type it 'somdomite.') and Dante admits his complicity in this sin, and basically anyone who tells you about the Cult of Friendship in the Middle Ages is lying to you. This isn't subtextual. It's also vivid and gorgeous -- Brunetto, his old teacher, is the main speaker and at the end although he is doomed to run around in fire for all eternity he runs off into the sunset 'like a runner competing for the white flag on Venice's green, and he seemed to me among the winners, not among the losers.' I love Dante, even though, as Ji has pointed out, he is a tool.

3. Cake. The band, not the pastry, although the pastry is also very good. Frank Sinatra is perhaps my favorite although Short Skirt, Long Jacket is an obvious second, and their cover of Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps is third. Bass vocalist + interesting non-traditional arrangements + horn sections = the key to Emma's pants heart.

4. Radio Yerevan jokes. A caller asked the Radio Yerevan, "Is there a difference between capitalism and communism?" The Armenian Radio is proud to answer this question. The answer is, "In principle, yes. In capitalism, man exploits man. In communism, it's the reverse."

Similarly: "What is chaos?"
"We do not comment on national economics."

5. Pi Day.

6. No Country For Old Men. Or, Javier Bardem Kills Everyone. I have no idea how he makes his voice do that but I suspect it's by not ... technically being human. They do a riff in it on 'You don't have to do this,' which is my number one least favorite sentence to hear in a movie where somebody is holding a gun, because it absolutely means the person who just said it will get shot. It's worth noting that you should not watch this movie alone -- after a term full of incredibly violent Oscar winners, this is the only one that made girls in my dorm scream and jump about a foot every time anything happened. I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

7. Dara Ó Briain. If you can remember how to spell that name, he's got a whole comedy show up on YouTube that is lovely and made me nearly piss myself in public.

8. My Arabic book. Sentences that I can now say: "The bad spy offered the bad man a cup of coffee, but the good spy didn't like their relations and cut them off with a machine gun."

Aria made a post on the little things that make you happy. At the moment it's flocked, although she'll see this when she gets up and deflock it, but -- go, go comment, I'm curious, and the lists are beautiful.

So, uh, the coolest thing I have seen in a while is dracula1897. Realtime posting of the epistles in the Dracula novel in chronological, not in-book, order. FOR ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE SAID YOU DO NOT HAVE TIME TO READ DRACULA: READ THIS.

NOW.

I MEAN IT.

Anyway.

Friendsmeme! I met christycorr over the magic of deadmentalking, where, as I recall, she played some TOTAL ROMAN LOSER who was not a PATCH on Machiavelli THANK YOU SO MUCH. (marius_sucks. Sulla, actually, was rather impressively awesome.) Although we haven't talked much since, I do know she has excellent taste in manga, see DeathNote, and literature, although granted I'm sure Lispector is required reading in Brazil. Right -- she's Brazilian, which should be a selling point, and quite entertaining, which should be another!

1. Reprise of June: ... Les Miserables is still one of the most amazing things ever to reach this earth. Not least because the musical was translated from French--they weren't just adapting a French novel, which is hard enough, they were adapting French lyrics, and they did it ridiculously well. Not least also because of the Javert on the recording I have being fucking amazing, just perfectly guttural and bass-y and deep. evil_overlords is the best for giving me this.

2. My mother gave me a candle at some point today that is ... flavored as best we can tell like pumpkin pie. Oddly enough it doesn't smell at all while it's burning, but it's the most gorgeous shade of brown, so I'm not complaining. The best bit is, of course, the tag, which reads Benefits of SOY in big letters, and then underneath:

• Highly Fraganced
• Enviromentally Safe
• Clean & Long-Lasting
• Supports America's Farmers
MADE IN USA

Thank you, candle company. We appreciate the sales pitch.

3. Muuuuuuuuuuu.

Richard III, South Park Style.

... wow. Brilliant.