1. I updated my journal layout. :D The crack in my screen means I needed to devote less space to decoration, plus I was getting tired of staring at that old fanart and the off-green - not that most of you have looked at it recently, I hope. I'd been putting off changing it because I kept saying I was going to switch to a proper, standard-compliant S2 style instead of the hacked-together S1-mimicking thing I threw together way back during closed beta.

The thing is, DW layouts are hard. It should not be this hard! Granted I've been slacking on keeping up my programming skills, but I'm pretty sure if I want to be able to get anything like the style I want, I am going to have to block out, like, two weeks just to figure out how all the bits fit together before I even get into learning how the language works. Seriously. I realize the main reason it's so hard is that, a, they wanted to make it flexible and useful for serious developers, and, b, inherited from LJ, and, c, CSS, but nothing about it makes any f*sking sense and the documentation and customization areas - and I know there are probably people reading this who worked on the documentation, so I want you to know it's not your fault, it's systemic - suck.

It's also hard because everybody who puts in the time to learn the system are people who really care about styles. Which is fine, but it means all the built-in system ones are, well, intended for people who care about style. Stylish is not what I want! Dammit. I want to be able to paint the walls, move in my comfy old furniture, and maybe slap up a poster or two. I want my old LJ style, which does only and exactly what I need it to, with no "design elements" cluttering the place up.

So I'm sticking with the hacked-together old layout until I have two weeks with nothing else to do, because I can actually make it do what I need it to do. Sorry, anybody using technology that doesn't like my tables.

(The new colors are scarlet and gray to express my unironic love of the Tropo Red site scheme, and nothing to do with any other fandom thing I'm currently into that uses scarlet and gray. Nope. The header image incorporates no reappropriated zodiac symbols and has nothing to do with that fandom thing either, I just like jewel-toned rainbows and knotwork. yep.)

2. And don't let my taking down the old header image convince you I've soured on cracked-out Star Trek crossovers! Why just yesterday I was talking with sineala at length about how one could easily write wonderful Rosemary Sutcliff/Rihannsu-verse crossovers, following on her revelation that Rihannsu-verse is basically Rome in Space.

The interesting thing there, though, which we really didn't touch on in the conversation, is that Rome - at least in Sutcliff's narrative - was the Empire bringing Civilization to the Barbarians. The Rihannsu never had the luxury of being surrounded by Barbarians - they're trapped behind a demilitarized zone, and have been for most of their spacefaring history, three-quarters surrounded by the Federation, and the rest by Klingons. You could do some cool things there with the ways the Federation is - or at least pretends to be - a loose confederation of tribes; and the way actual!Rome wasn't actually bringing civilization to the Barbarians either, along most of its borders, and of course you could do a lot of interesting things with colonization, imperialism, and hegemony in general, but I'm mostly just staring cockeyed at all the ways it changes the meaning of Empire when you're bottled in the Neutral Zone and vaguely patronized by everybody around you. Which actually had always fascinated me in a worldbuilding sense about the Rihannsu, but putting it explicitly as a parallel to Sutcliff's Roman Britain--

Anyway. Which is why I will not be writing the extensive Eagle AU I outlined there where wounded former Subcommander Aquila, (a relative on his father's side of a certain nameless Romulan Commander) and his slave Esca are sent undercover into Federation territory to retrieve the Sword from the Empty Chair, because I really, really don't have the energy to dig into all that right now.

...I am almost tempted to start writing the one where Erei'Riov Llaekh i-Aerl - who has no house-name, because he has no house, because Hellguard - has long been assigned alone to a largely-automated monitoring station on the Neutral Zone, where he has been running a highly lucrative operation smuggling Romulan Ale across the border (with the help of some connections on the Federation side, especially an incredibly reckless Human tramp pilot named Connla and his extended family) which gets disrupted when a new Commander shows up - some disgraced nephew of a Tribune, sent there to rot alongside Llaekh - and starts being entirely too competent.

I was almost tempted to start writing that because I thought I might be able to do it without it turning into a epic novel-length thing full of plot, but then the Arcani wanted to get involved, so maybe not.

Luckily I don't have to, because sineala is already not writing the Frontier Wolf crossover. :P

3. Con.txt panel suggestion time is almost over! I threw in a few last-minute ones and now I'm done, but anybody else going to con.txt should put in their own! -- right now there's only about 60 nominations for something like 45 panel slots, which means there's way too much risk of most of mine getting in. You don't have to be able to mod them! And even if you do, modding con.txt panels is dead easy and not scary at all.

(I am also being amused at the fandoms that are showing up this year! You know slash fandom is in a weird place when the fandoms that get the most panel suggestions are two BBC shows, a movie about Roman Britain that had seriously limited release, and a movie that isn't out yet.

...or possibly you just know that the part of slash fandom that goes to con.txt is awesome. One or the other.

...still. man. It's weird, Slash has gone a really long time without having a new American-network-show that ate fandom. Times they are a changin'.)

4. Went to the dump today, after spending last weekend tearing all the rotten bits of roofing off the woodshed. Is it weird that I really like landfills? I mean not that I have vast experience with them, but Deer Island in Boston is just refreshing, and today at our local place we had to drive up Trash Mountain, which is the highest point in the county, and the views are amazing. And all the recently-filled-over places have that look of fresh new land about them - they're meadows, unmowed but not yet overgrown, which you only get around here in very specific circumstances - and, anyway, I know that six inches under the grass it's probably horrible, but on the surface it's just really airy and sunny and pretty. And then there's all the stuff! All the human detritus, taken as far out of context as it can be, and yet still trying so hard to impart meaning to itself. I want to go back with no trash and just a camera. Would they think that was creepy? They would probably think that was creepy.

5. I accidentally deleted everything in my DW inbox in the course of trying to figure out how to customize a style (don't ask.) On the plus side, "clean out inbox" can now be crossed off the to-do list! On the minus side, uh, if you ever sent me a PM, I no longer have it.