Hey folks! This is the artist formerly known as morgan32. I have renamed my LJ that's all, and I'm now briarwood. This matches my Dreamwidth and InsaneJournal accounts.

Nothing else should have changed - I didn't intentionally de-friend anyone and all the old links should redirect. If the evil LJ bot has somehow knocked you off my friends list when I renamed, please let me know and I'll fix it.

I've got over 18,000 words written of this story: the working title is When The World Is Burning. It's SPN set after the S4 finale, gen with some het so far. As originally planned it will be Sam/Dean eventually, but I'm beginning to think it won't go that way. Still it's very much a Sam and Dean story.

But I broke my golden rule with this one - I started the story without the first clue how it's going to end. I can't post a WIP when I can't promise I'll finish it...but I'm itching to share at least parts of this fic. I think it's pretty good, but this is very much an unedited version.

So I'm going to post under friends-lock, starting tomorrow. I'm posting this, now, because I don't routinely friend people back. I don't post much under lock, and I try to keep my reading list - which is what my flist is - at a manageable size. But if you have me friended and you'd like to read the story, comment here and I'll add you so you can.

I'm not using any special filter, so if you already see my occasional locked posts, you'll see the fic.

Well...I don't know whiskey tango foxtrot is going on with my site.

• Still no response from the tech support guys.


• The support site appears to be accessible but when I try to log in, it becomes unavailable. Not just the login page, the whole site. It's almost as if the site is IP-banning anyone who tries to log into it.


• Early this morning, the creative-imperative.net domain was pointing to a site that was most definitely not mine. It was, I think, in Spanish.


• This morning I still had no FTP access to the site.


• Yet just now, when I tried from work, the site seems to be there. The fic archive is broken, but that's not a surprise.


• Goddess alone knows what it'll look like when I get home!


• Still no word from tech support.

I swear, if I were still paying for this account, I'd already have moved.

ETA: An answer from the techs! Wow, it only took a week. They claim it was a DNS error which is now fixed. I still don't have access but if that's truly down to a DNS problem a few more days should fix that. I do need to get the site sorted out, though. I may not be able to get my fic back and that's not good. At the very least, I need to set up a mirror or backup with a webhost that actually answers tech support queries.

So, remember I said they filmed part of this series of Torchwood near my place?

( Pics under the cut )

Heads up - I'm gonna bite the bullet and rename my LJ this weekend. (Kip, that's why I haven't posted yet about the thing we were discussing; I don't want to confuse people by starting out with one name and switching mid-conversation to another! But I'm on board and will post soon.)

*

I have actually been watching Torchwood. I am not a fan: they lost me with episode one (Rape is not funny. Ever). But they filmed part of the current series a stone's throw from my house...so I had to watch, just to see.

The bastards CGI-ed in some trees or you'd be able to see my bedroom window! No one cares but me, I'm sure, but still.

*

My website is down - creative-imperative.net. Or at least, it's down for me. It's the only one of my sites still with that particular web host; and it's been three days with no response to my attempts to contact tech support. They're notorious for this. And now I can't even log in to the support site...I'm wondering if the company finally folded, but Google yields no information. So far.

The same thing happened a few years ago when I had the Stargate Fan Awards site hosted there but that righted itself eventually and by then I'd moved the site in question. This time...well, the Creative Imperative site was screwy anyhow because they upgraded something and it broke my galleries. I hadn't found time to put everything right. Wasn't bothered as long as my fic archive still worked.

The good part: I have the domain registered via an independent company so if I have to dump the site, I can. It's only still there because I'm lazy. The bad: if I do that, I think I've lost a lot of my archived fic. The HTLJ, Buffy/Angel, Sentinel and most of my SPN fic is safe in AO3 and the SPN fics I don't have archived there are on LJ. But my Stargate and Highlander stories will be gone. Some of the SG fic is probably still at Area52 and I have some on my hard drive, I'm certain, but probably not all of them. My Highlander fic was never archived anywhere else. And it'll take me forever to rebuild the site properly. If I have to.

*

I was sick with a migraine on Tuesday; this means I now have to go caffeine-free for at least a week. As a pain-management strategy it works - I get far fewer headaches and when it's bad enough to make me spend a day in bed it doesn't last more than that day. In the past I was losing two or three days at a time, every month.

But the downside of cutting out the caffeine is obvious - I can't. stay. awake. Fell asleep on a two-minute bus journey yesterday and ended up in the city centre when I meant to get off at Tesco! This is why I can't cut out the caffeine entirely...well, that and my Cafe Nero addiction.

*

Crossposting from Dreamwidth is a PITA from work. It's likely not DW's fault but the ancient browser I'm forced to use here doesn't display the update page properly. So I can't tag or set a mood...can't change the icon half the time. PITA!

Fill a tall glass with ice. Pour in condensed milk until it's about a third full. Top up with hot espresso. Stir.

Absolutely wonderful!

This isn't really a review - just a quick rec.

I just got home after seeing Public Enemies. I knew I'd enjoy it. I mean, Johnny Depp and Christian Bale in the same film? It's not just the eye candy aspect: both men, in general, have really good taste in the projects they pick.

And I was not disappointed. The film does a great job of pulling you into the period. Johnny is amazing as John Dillinger especially in two particular scenes toward the end. The script pays a lot more attention to his character than to Chris Bale's, but Chris' performance, too, was very good. Subtle. I'm a bit torn on the way his character was treated. I would have liked to see a bit more of the human side of him - all the movie really shows is this dedicated cop - but on the other hand, movies that focus too much on the personal tick me off. The happy medium is hard to find.

The one disappointment was that the two male leads didn't get much time on screen together. And that's only disappointing becauce I was looking for the slash potential :-) Which I think is there in the way it is in any hunter/hunted relationship, but I was hoping for just a little bit more...

But seriously - good film, definitely one to see.

You can keep your Star Trek. This is what a re-imagining looks like.

The Guardian has some promo pics from Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland...and it looks amazing!

Check them out!

The bad news is the film isn't due out until next year :-(

My OU assignment is finished! Well...the draft is finished, but that was my aim. I can now take my time over editing/polishing it and won't need to panic over the deadline. I got 78 for my first assignment; I doubt this one will score so high but I'm confident I've at least answered the questions.

More importantly this means I've caught up after the time I lost by going to Asylum and failing to study for a week after that 'cause my head was too full of new fic ideas.

I plan to reward myself by taking the afternoon off on Wednesday (flexitime is wonderful *g*) and going to Cardiff to catch the preview of Public Enemies. I mean, seriously - Johnny Depp and Christian Bale in the same movie - that's got to be a must-see!

This is my warnings policy. It is not fixed or final, and I welcome critique and suggestions, particularly for anything I may have omitted.

I really struggled with this. I want to warn responsibly for those who truly need those warnings. I have more than one friend with PTSD. I understand the issues, though I'm lucky enough not to suffer from PTSD myself. But at the same time, I feel strongly that being too specific with warnings can spoil enjoyment of the story for many readers. It often does for me.

Caveat: I am not interested in "squicks". This policy is about warnings for potentially triggering content which can cause genuine harm to survivors. If you're squicked by something I write you know where the 'back' button is. Please use it.

This post will be linked from my sidebar and user info, and (as long as I remember) from the headers of any fic I post from now on.

( Warnings policy - in brief )

( Warnings policy - longer explanations )

( Definitions )

( Ratings Policy )


I'll end this post by repeating what I said at the beginning; I welcome critique and discussion of this policy and I am happy to consider suggestions for things I may have omitted from my list.

I will at some point go back through my stories and ensure that, on LJ (and its clones) at least, my headers all comply with this. For now, this should be taken to apply to anything I post from July 2009 onward.

Just a quick comment...

( Spoiliers )

I saw two movies at the cinema this weekend. The first was My Sister's Keeper, based on the Jodie Picoult novel of the same name. It was good, but not great. The story of a girl conceived as a "designer baby" to save the life of her sister, who has leukaemia. She sues her parents for medical emancipation because they want her to donate a kidney to her sister and she doesn't want to do that. Who can blame her?

I made a point of reading the book first as a sort of experiment; I wanted to see if I could guess how they'd change it for the big screen. I must be getting better at this 'cause I nailed almost everything. ( I guess I'd better cut this for spoilers... )

The second movie was Blood: The Last Vampire. This is based on an anime, of which I have no knowledge, so I can't comment on the adaption aspects. It was a fairly slick horror/action movie. Saya is a vampire with a soul (where have I heard that before?), 400 years old (but looks 16) and has dedicated her life to finding and killing the vampire queen Onigan. In the meantime, she kills every other vampire she comes across, mostly with a katana. ( It's plot-lite so there aren't really spoilers, but just in case... )

The rest of my weekend has been spend working on my next OU assignment. I'm half done, but Gods, this one is boring! The subject is fine; I'm enjoying it, but the assignment questions are not very inspiring this time around. I was hoping to finish today but it's not going to happen. Here's hoping I can do it tomorrow so I can move on to the next gazillion things on my to-do list!

So...how was your weekend? Having fun yet?

As fandom is in the midst of the annual warnings debate...

I strongly dislike warning on fic. I think much of the time warnings act as spoilers. But you know what? I still put warnings on my fic. Because that's just what you do when you write stuff as dark as I do. You take account of the fact that some of what you're putting out there can hurt people.

This latest iteration of the debate led to trigger_fence being created. I started to think about drafting a warnings-policy of my own that I can link to from my fic headers or wherever. But I found doing so a lot more challenging than I expected.

trigger_fence lists the following as things that are triggering and should be warned for:

( Cut for length; discussion of triggering issues under the cut )

I have a feeling I'm going to be avoiding TV for the next month!

So Michael Jackson died. And all the news services can talk about is what a fantastic person he was.

Are they kidding?

Talk about him as the first African-American artist to acheive mainstream stardom. Talk about him as a pop phenomenon or as the guy who made the music video the essential dimension of a hit.

( But don't gloss over what he was. )

What is "red velvet cake"?

For some reason it seems to be a major topic of discussion on LJ and I have no clue what it is. I assume cake means sweet and sponge-like, but I'm betting velvet isn't an actual ingredient.

Confused...

ETA: Answered! Thanks...though I'm weirded out by the answer :-)