Have some videos.

( New Within Temptation song and Doctor Who Season 5 trailer )

ADD is annoying. Not being able to find a job sucks. I am sick and tired of politicians talking about climate change and then not doing anything.
Fandom-related essays are cool. Over-analysing fandom is fun. I even have some essay topics in mind about fandom. If I list them here I might actually write them sometime:
-Air Gear, why I love it, and why aspects of it make me deeply uncomfortable (some form of feminist analysis)
-The awesome portrayal of women in Fullmetal Alchemist
-Related to the above: the roles of Riza and Winry in FMA and their links to female archetypes
-The Immortals arc and coming-of-age motifs in Naruto (I actually started this one... don't know if I'll ever finish it though)
And, because I feel like it, here are some really interesting fandom essays from other people:
Labyrinth as feminist myth
Feminism in Bleach
...Dammit, I know there are more than that. Well, I am leaving out some of the more controversial/argumentative shipping essays, but there are others
Ooh, here's another one (sort of): Sherwood Smith on modern reinterpretations of Jane Austen books. She also has quite a few other essay-type things on her journal.

My grades for the second semester finally came through and WOW.
A in International Relations, A+ in Political Science, A+ in Geology and A+ in Environmental Science.
I'm completely bowled over.

I've been trying to watch the Kobato anime on Youtube - my internet is too slow to download episodes or watch them at anything better than Youtube quality. Trouble is, I can only view one of a given episode - if I try to click the other parts I get a message saying "due to copyright restrictions this video is not available in your country". This seems to apply regardless of who posted the video or who fansubbed it.

Can anyone help/explain/direct me somewhere else?

Uni is now over for the year! And I'm glad! Four papers + Nationals + world's second-worst exam timetable = stressed, exhausted me. I'm now in the process of catching up on sleep.

I'm not very good at posting, am I? Half the time I start to post and then something shiny goes by and I lose interest. Stupid ADD.

In order to prevent this post from being entirely pointless, here are some links to Melissa McEwan's steampunk wedding ring, the TV Tropes page for Walking With Dinosaurs and Syaoran and Watanuki cats

Sometimes several fandoms attack me at once.

( Spoilers for Bleach, Naruto, FMA and Tsubasa )

♫ leave me a comment saying "SAY IT TO MY FACE, BITCH",
♫ i'll respond by asking you five questions so i can get to know you better.
♫ update your journal with the answers to the questions.
♫ include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.
( Questions from <lj user=amorphic> )

Back at uni and taking four papers this semester. This means a much bigger workload. Not to mention the fact that I'm now half an hour late to every dancing lesson because I have lectures finishing at the same time as dancing starts on the other side of town. Fun.
Things I have learned so far this semester:
Realism is one of the most depressing ideologies out there.
Petrographic microscopes are awesome.
No one wants to be called an idealist (except me).
There are many devious strategies employed by course coordinators to ensure that all the students actually do all their readings and remember what they've learned.
The Bruces' Philosophers Song is surprisingly useful for POLS 112 and INTP 113.
Reading Hetalia makes one look at International Relations in a whole new light.

Uni starts up again on Monday. I feel as if I've barely recovered from the last semester.
I got my results today, though: A- in Political Science, A in Earth Science and A+ in Geography. I am slightly bowled over.
This is quite interesting, not to mention hilarious. It's a mash-up of clips from Twilight and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, showing how some of Edward's behaviour towards Bella is pretty disturbing, despite being portrayed as romantic. The comments are also worth a read.
Note: I have never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer and don't really intend to. I understand it also has some issues; however, this clip is brilliant.

Stolen from Shakesville:
To what stereotype(s) do you conform, much to your chagrin and/or amusement? And what stereotype(s) do you defy?

I'll post my own answers later.

I wrote a fic. A rather cracky fic.

Title: In Which Tsuna Wishes He Could Disappear
Fandom: Reborn!
Character/pairing: Tsuna, Reborn, Gokudera, Yamamoto, Ryohei, Hibari, Chrome, Haru, Kyoko; lots and lots of UST
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Set a year or two after current canon; no significant spoilers though. Contains rather a lot of multishipping.

( Interpersonal relations in the Vongola base have recently become a whole lot more complicated... )

I have new userpics!  And I must post to celebrate this!
All my lectures are finished for this semester and my exams are in a couple of weeks.  Meaning I now have to study.  Fun.
And I recommend Gunnerkrigg Court.  So does Neil Gaiman.

Have a meme.
Taken from slb_addicted 
Name one of my fandoms, and I'll answer the questions.

1. The first character I fell in love with:
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now:
3. The character everyone else loves that I don’t:
4. The character I love that everyone else hates:
5. The character I would shag anytime:
6. The character I'd want to be like:
7. The character I'd slap:
8. A pairing that I love:
9. A pairing that I despise:
10. Favorite character:
11. What are my five favorite things about the fandom.
12. What are my five least favorite things about the fandom.
13. Who are my five favorite characters.
14. Who are my five least favorite characters.
15. What are my five favorite pairings.
16. What are my five least favorite pairings.
17. Which character are you most like.
18. What is my deep, dark fandom secret.

I had two essays due this week and I've got another one due next week.  I have been busy, but I'm taking a break at the moment.  The weather here is foul - cold and windy, mainly, which normally I wouldn't mind except it's really cold and really really windy.  It's been like this for a few days and is expected to stay like this until sometime next week.
I've also got a cold.  It was worst on Thursday, which was also when I had to write the bulk of my Earth Science essay.  I did manage to get it finished and I handed it in yesterday morning.  I'm feeling better today.
I also have a new fandom. shadowsinfire finally convinced me to read Katekyo Hitman Reborn!  And, well once I got past the first 50 chapters or so (which are basically filler), I started to really enjoy it.

( Possibly spoilery for Reborn!; discussion of shipping and what people read for )
Also, I got a book in the university bookshop sale about urban legends, UFO sightings and the (allegedly) paranormal in New Zealand.  Written by the head of the NZ Skeptics' Society.  I haven't read much of it yet, bud did you know that meteorites and shooting stars were considered myths by the scientific establishment until the beginning of the nineteenth century? 
Also: obligatory aliens in Palmerston North tag.

To all my NZ friends of voting age:  you might want to have a look at this.
I still haven't even decided if I'll vote in the referendum.

ETA: apparently today is Talk Like Shakespeare Day.

I have just read City of Glass, the third book in Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments trilogy.  Sure, it's definitely not great literature - it's somewhat overwritten and under-edited - but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
( Spoilers under the cut )
Anyway, I recommend it to CLAMP fans (angst, messed-up relationships, love dodecahedron, urban fantasy, subtext etc.) and to urban fantasy fans and generally to most of my friends.

Title: Somewhere beyond
Day/Theme: March 25 - come the morning and the day winding like dreams
Fandom: Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE
Characters/pairing: C!Syaoran/C!Sakura
Rating: PG
Warnings: This is a very strange fic.  It could be very depressing or reassuring and uplifting, depending on your interpretation.  And it has misuse of certain key astrophysical theories.  Oh, and spoilers up to chapter 211.

( Somewhere beyond the end of all worlds... )

The pro-choice/pro-life debate has always interested me (I'm on the pro-choice side), but I never even thought about this aspect of it (some of the comments are worth reading too).  It really upsets me that there can be all this stuff about the negative psychological effects of abortion but absolutely nothing on the negative effects for the birth mother in cases of adoption.
Just go and read it.

Well, I've survived my first two weeks at uni and I'm starting to feel slightly less overwhelmed by it all.  It's surprising how few familiar faces there are around the place.  I mean, there are quite a few people I know, but I don't see much of them, even the ones I share lectures with.  And then straight after the lecture everyone's rushing off in different directions and you don't get much chance to talk to people unless your two-hour gap between lectures happens to overlap with theirs.
In terms of content I'm enjoying all my courses (I'm taking Political Science, Earth Science and Geography and I'll be picking up International Relations next semester).  It's a pain having to catch the bus at 7:30 am for a 9 o'clock lecture, though.  If I ever get an 8 o'clock lecture I'm moving into town.
The highlight so far has been the letters page of the weekly student magazine.  They publish anything and everything.  Currently there's a debate going on between three gamers as to which of them is the most 1337, people sending in random poetry, trolls, complaints about first years being n00bs, first years complaining about being called n00bs, letters all in lowercase with multiple!!!! exclamation!!!! marks!!!!, lolcat-speak, in-jokes and more.
I'm going to get really fit walking up the hill every day.  I decided I'd only take the cable car if the weather was foul, so that I can save money and get fit all at once.  The only downside is that I turn up for my nine o'clock lecture out of breath and with very sore calf muscles, but that will improve.
Mood-wise, I'm all over the place.  I guess that's understandable, but it's pretty tiring.  I'm OK, though, mostly.

( spoilers for recent chapters of Bleach, Naruto, Tsubasa and Holic )
Also, I highly recommend the manga Someday's Dreamers.  It's only two volumes long, but it's lovely.  The central concept is kind of like xxxHolic or Kobato (somewhere in between) and the tone of the store is more like the later volumes of Fruits Basket.