From winterlive's journal:

1. Reply to this post, and I will pick four/five of your userpics.
2. Make a post and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon squee.

( Danny's Picks - Warning: Some AtS and SPN Discussion )

This is sort of a crazy, catch-up post as I haven't posted in some days and a lot has happened in the meantime.

First, the fannish things, because they are more easily discussed:

WARNING: Spoilers behind every cut, including those for the movie Deception, Supernatural episodes 3x13 and 3x14, NCIS Season 5, and all of Torchwood.

1) My dearest Ewan.

Ewan McGregor. One of my truest loves. I maintain that I would listen to the man reading a grocery list - even pay to do so if the opportunity arose - and I have watched him portray everything from a trombone-playing plant worker to an indecently exposed rock star with a cocaine habit and too much eyeliner.

( All that being said... (Spoilers for Deception Ahead )

2) And how about those Winchester boys?

( 'It's uncanny how you managed to both honor his memory and grossly exploit the manner of his death.' )

3) Meanwhile, my NCIS squee...

( ...knows no bounds. )

4) And then there's Torchwood.

( 'I should have known right from the start//that you would go and break my heart...' )

Last, Real Life.

( Or the least random bit of this randomness. )

So. I've just heard Kripke's spoilers for the character casting in Season 4. And unlike some others, I am not altogether pleased.

( Here's why. )

I know this is not a popular opinion. Respond to it anyway :p Give me your (well reasoned and intelligent) thoughts. Give me your opposition or your support - even if only in a tastefully concise >:( or :D I'd like to see how the numbers add up on either side of the fan reaction to this decision.

O. M. G. Ha!

I am a total geek for even getting excited about this... and it doesn't matter at all to anyone who isn't into both fandoms...

But I was looking through Sebastian Spence's IMDB profile (for nefarious, naughty-RPS-writing purposes) and realized why he looked so familiar to me! He was on Supernatural! Minus the suit and glasses, in jeans and a leather jacket...

Azazel's son is Donald Strachey's husband :D That is just hilarious to me.

ETA: Apparently, he was also in an episode of Dawson's Creek that Jensen Ackles guest-starred in... And he was on Dark Angel! Charlie! I can't believe I didn't catch that.

I haven't done this in a while, but felt like it when I saw this week's questions.

( Spoilers for Dream a Little Dream, Mystery Spot and Jus En Bello )

Thank God for fandom and download links the very day after a missed episode.

( Commentary on Mystery Spot - OMG, the Funny and the Pain! )

( Thoughts on Malleus Malificarum. )

And speaking of disquieted... Go read fleshflutter's In the Valley of the Shadow. Sam/Jess/Madison/Dean. This is so deliciously disturbing... in that slow-building, subtle way that is so much freakier than a quick, in-your-face creepy.

Five Times Bela Talbot Feared for Her Life (And One Time She Was Actually Right). What a great little piece by tigriswolf. Honestly, I like Bela more than any other female we've ever seen on Supernatural - pain in the ass bitch that she is :p The key to this fic is the brevity of the glimpses into Bela's life - proof that there is a real person lurking beneath the cold calculation, leaving you wanting more. Followed by the kind of quick, clean end you can just picture for her.

“Listen to my voice,” he says, “and tell me if I’m serious.”

Hopefully I'm not giving anything away that you couldn't have figured out on your own having seen Fresh Blood and thought about the title of this... But one of the many reasons I like Bela is the perspective she gives us of Dean.

"The legend is so much more than the man."

Sometimes I forget - insulated by the show's focus on Dean and Sam - what a name the Winchesters have made for themselves in the outside world. Bela reminds me of that - and of how dangerous the boys can be under the right circumstances. Also, how adorable :)

Dean: Tell me I can shoot her.
Sam: Not in public.

:D

And while I'm reccing here, anyhow... here are a few more good reads I've had recently :)

The Infectious Love of Eric Kripke by nemo_88 J2, NC-17. Supernatural gets moved to Showtime... and Wincest becomes canon! :p Heh. Yeah - now imagine Jare and Jen's reaction!

Also: Lingering in the Golden Gleam - J2 Family Man style :D

And my one vid rec: Cowboys From Hell - a general Supernatural vid by ladymanson. Great editing, Pantera, and our favorite clips of the boys being badass :) What's not to love?

ETA: One more link... to The Human Condition, a Human AU BtVS/AtS archive!

Lisa lied. Ben is so Dean's kid. In the words of Mal:

"Why are you arguin' what's already been decided?"

;)

Yay! :D

( So We're Dealing With Mr. and Mrs. God ; Good to know - Spoilers for SPN 3x08 )

I can't wait til the next new episode :)

And on another topic, I am now convinced that the Disney channel breeds slash fans! I can't remember watching anything slashy when I was younger, now, but the shows today... I just watched an episode of The Suite Life in which the twin brothers/main characters did a tango :p Complete with rose-clenched-between-the-teeth. It makes me think chicken-vs-egg thoughts about whether there has always been subtext, even in programming meant for children, or if I only see the subtext now that I've developed a taste for it.

It also makes me think about the nature of slash again. These days, rather than aiming at teaching children by showing them the way things should be, kids' shows teach children by showing them the way things are through the eyes of characters they can relate to, and by having those characters make the choices we would like our children to make. Even the adults in many children's shows behave in a childlike manner. So subtext isn't so strange. Children, after all, develop their sexualities and gender identities by playacting in a very gender-nonspecific way (girls can be daddies when playing house, brothers and sisters can be man and wife, etc.)

Is that why we write slash? To explore our sexuality by "playacting" in an environment where we aren't limited by the specifics of our gender? Small children can't actually be mommies and daddies, husbands and wives, but they're curious about what those relationships entail, so they play. Maybe those of us heterosexual females who write slash do so because we don't feel free to behave in our relationships with men the way we would if we hadn't developed a sense of what is and what is not "acceptable" behavior for a heterosexual female. We chose a protagonist for our fiction that is male (though in many situations he might react as we would ourselves) and explore what a relationship between him and another man would entail.

I don't know what I'm talking about :p But it's interesting to think about. Especially when you apply the same hypothesis to the issue of why many heterosexual men enjoy the thought of women carrying on lesbian relationships.

Man it feels good to get back to the computer :) I haven't had time in weeks and I've been feeling the void :p I've become so slash-deprived I wrote, like, 50 words of slash in my head for the carpenter and the sewing guy on the HGTV design show Divine Design! Plus I watched Spiderman 3 and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, so that didn't help. Harry is exponentially sexier in the third movie and that moment, in Silver Surfer, when this exchange happens:

Reed: Yeah. I didn't play football. I stayed inside and studied like a good little nerd. And now? Fifteen years later... I'm one of the greatest minds of the twenty-first century. I'm engaged to the hottest girl on the planet. And the jock is standing in front of me asking for help, and I say he's not going to get a damned thing unless he does exactly what I say.

Susan: I am so hot for you right now.

Johnny: Me too!

I so feel the Reed/Johnny in that movie. Or Reed/Susan/Johnny maybe :D

Also, NCIS has lost a lot of its Gibbs/DiNozzo-ness for me (though the Tim/Tony still lurks just beneath) and I'm battling the Ziva/Tony beast, but Supernatural has had several slashy moments to keep my slasher's brain busy. Haven't the boys been awesome this season? Wow. And Mercedes McNabb guest-starred last night! Joss totally pimps for Kripke - that's 3 Angel girls who have guest-starred already. I wait in baited breath now for Charisma :) If Fate is kind, she's gotta follow the trend.

Speaking of Fate being kind, I checked my junk e-mail before it automatically rolled over as trash (because sometimes my mailing list messages and such end up there by accident) and I found out I'd been missing my Favorite Author alerts from FanFiction.Net. I've had kikkimax listed there since she wrote some awesome Tony-centric NCIS fics way-back when.

Well, now kikkimax is writing for Supernatural! A World Without Monsters has an amazing kick. Bullies is loads of fun with a little bittersweet. And Defect is one of the best crossovers I've ever read. It combines worlds so seemlessly, has a compelling and clever plotline and features all the things that attracted me to kikkimax's writing in the first place - empathy towards and insight into all of the characters, great attention to detail and the history of the canon (canons), and fresh perspectives on familiar characters and events. I've never seen an episode of Criminal Minds, but I felt totally comfortable in this story and now I'd love to watch the show!