what may or may not be hard reality

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Title: conversation on the road
Fandoms: Jane the Virgin
Pairing: Luisa Alver/Rose Solano
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 1133
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Finally she turns to look at Rose. She means to yell at her. Accuse her of... anything. Everything. Instead what comes out is: “Who are you?” and her throat aches with the softness of it. She wants to scream, but can't seem to find the energy.
Author's Note: post-ep "chapter fourteen", this is not a happy fic

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@AO3: conversation on the road

( lj-cut: conversation on the road )

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Title: Thursday Morning
Fandoms: CSI: Miami, Miami Medical
Pairing: Calleigh Duquesne/Eva Zambrano
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1247
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Conversations and coffee, just another Thursday morning (almost).
Author's Note: Thanks to sakuracorr and lovesthesoundof!

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( Thursday Morning )

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Title: A Wedding Night
Author: fallon ash
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Pairing: Regina Mills/Emma Swan
Rating: G (sorry)
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Word Count: 1330
Summary: "As they cross the lawn toward the mayor's mansion it suddenly occurs to Emma to wonder if Regina expects Emma to carry her over the threshold."
Author's Note: I posted this on tumblr way back when unbetad because I was getting on a plane the next day and had a moment of OMG I'm gonna die, but never got around to posting it elsewhere. Now I've tweaked it a little, and thank you to sakuracorr for beta!

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( A Wedding Night )

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For a pleasant cooking experience, remember to sharpen your knives, kids. I've been putting it off, because didn't I just do that recently? Clearly not. I was actually literally growling at this damn tomato before I gave up halfway through and informed myself that Hey, I have a perfectly good sharpening stone in that drawer over there. It makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD.

So this is my Top 10 vote for AfterEllen's Hot 100 2012, but *dammit* this year they allow for voting once every day. As if it wasn't difficult enough already! But Lana, Amanda, Chely, Jaime, Joanne, and Lucy have still been voted for every day. Dina, Christina, Mercedes, and Tina have had to make room on different days for Viola Davis, Rachel Shelley, Claudia Black, Gina Torres, Jennifer Beals, Catherine Bell, Annabeth Gish, Angie Harmon, Stephanie Zimbalist, Mariska Hargitay, Natalie Lisinska, Elizabeth Mitchell, Anna Silk, Zoie Palmer..... and goodness, the list goes on and on and on.... I wanna make some kind of 'fa's Hot 100' actually... so much pretty going around.

(compare: 2008, 2009, 2010)

That part where I said my tumblr was 70% Amanda Tapping? That was like 2 seconds before this happened. (She's still there, though! Just uhm.... there's a lot of Lana too.)

It started simply enough. A friend said 'Hey, you should totally watch Once Upon a Time, I think it'd be right up your alley!'. And I thought 'Hmm, well, all my shows are on hiatus anyway'', and consulted another friend whom I knew watched the show as well. She said 'The ladies are pretty! ...but perhaps not really your type.', but I decided to give it a try. And so I watched one episode, and then two, and admired Jennifer Morrison's hair and general kick-ass-ness, and worried about the fact that it was so very character-driven (not my thing. I get nervous when there are no MOTWs to take a bit of focus off of the main characters). And I honestly don't know where it came from, but it must have snuck up on me from somewhere... one second I was casually watching, the next I was watching with interest for Regina's scenes, and then suddenly I was madly reading all the Swan Queen fics I could get my hands on.

But as much as I like Emma, and I ship Swan Queen LIEK WHOA, I'm totally and utterly in it for Regina. And I largely blame that on the fics. The show really hasn't shown us Regina's true colors yet, but who she could be is someone I am utterly infatuated with (and I feel like I'm setting myself up for disappointment by loving her because I don't trust TPTB for a second to give her a Happy Ending - and I'm not saying she shouldn't pay in some way for all the cruel things she's done, but I still want that for her so badly (after lots and lots of angst, of course)). At first this didn't even extend to Lana the actress, I mean I liked her, but when I half-heartedly watched a few clips from other shows on YouTube I found myself missing that perpetually superior smirk on Regina's lips, those 14 extra layers of truth/lies in her eyes every time she says something. Then my usual crush procedure kicked in, and I fell head over heels the way I usually do. :P Such gorgeous thick dark hair (which we all know I have a weakness for). Such beautiful eyes. Such an awesome twitter personality! Must immediately watch complete filmography! Which is kind of awesome. Bisexual swinger. Brilliant Miami doctor. In Witness Protection for giving up her mobster boyfriend whom she loved so much (totally my favourite, they could put her anywhere. Like, you know, Storybrooke or Univille...). Bitchy fraud-scheming scientist. And much much more that I haven't gotten to yet. Can you imagine the crossover opportunities?! Yay!

And I'm also gonna go ahead and paste something here that I wrote on tumblr, not because I think this needs to be explained to you awesome LJ people, but because this fandom seems to inspire saddening amounts of inter-character hate that extends to fans actually being targeted as bad persons for liking certain characters, and should someone happen to stumble upon this post I wanna have it here:

liking a character =/= condoning their behaviour

Regina is doing some really awful evil things. No-one is denying that. We don’t like the evil characters because they’re doing awful things, or because we condone their actions. I love them because they’re broken and lashing out and I’m hoping (often against hope) that there might be a way to save them (after, oh, 6 agonizing seasons of angst or so… but hope has to be there). (There’s a reason Xena got better ratings than Hercules. Redemption is a powerful and appealing thing.) But none of these things means that it’s OK to be evil. I want Regina to pay for her crimes, but that doesn’t mean I hate her character. I love her character, it’s by far the most interesting one on the show (and also, Lana is really hot).

And also, TV =/= real life. This is important. Liking an evil character on TV is not the same as condoning criminal activities in real life. Real people are not getting hurt, and it allows the viewer to explore the human mind in a space where possibilities are endless and the studies don’t need to be approved by the board of ethics. Because doing these things in real life would be WRONG. And we all know that. But that doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to love a TV character. It’s a safe space, and it’s a fantasy, and everyone is allowed to love whatever TV characters they want.

And also, it's totally OK to love a character just because they're deliciously evil, and it doesn't make you a bad person either. :P (But in the tumblr context I posted the above I think that would have been unhelpful to my argument.)

Title: Everybody Wins, Everybody Loses
Author: fallon_ash
Fandom: Hustle, set in the early seasons
Pairing: Danny/Stacie/Mickey
Rating: Explicit
Word Count: 1195
Disclaimer: Not mine
Summary: “Oh shut up, both of you!” she finally screeches, and they stop, more from confusion than respect. “One game, one prize. Winner gets to screw me, loser gets to watch .”
Author's Note: Thanks to lovesthesoundof and sakuracorr for looking it over!

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( Everybody Wins, Everybody Loses )

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From Health Canada's page on Genetic Engineering, glossary:

"Genetically Modified: An organism, such as a plant, animal or bacterium, is considered genetically modified if its genetic material has been altered through any method, including conventional breeding. A "GMO" is a genetically modified organism."

(It should be noted that for example Wikipedia has a very different definition of "GMO", which specifies that 'genetic engineering' has to have been used and does not include "conventional breeding".)

Now, I'm assuming (hoping!) that Health Canada is trying to be easily accessible and easy to understand or whatever, but this is just dumb. "If its genetic material has been altered through any method." Bah. I'd like someone to show me ANYTHING that they can prove is not a "GMO" according to their definition. Every single living organism on this planet has had its genetic material altered! If we hadn't, we would all be identical single-cell DNA-strands on the bottom of the ocean!

So let's assume that maybe they mean 'altered by humans through any method' - but it's still dumb! It would include basically every crop, vegetable, fruit, and livestock EVER, except whatever people eat who still live as hunter/gatherers - and you bet whatever they eat has been genetically altered too, just not by humans, but by other animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, viruses, whatever.

These are the basics: DNA is the same in all living organisms. It consists of 4 different bases, that combine A-T, C-G, which can be reorganized in any which order. But it will never be anything else than those 4 bases, regardless of whether humans or Nature does the reorganizing. Sure, we can genetically engineer all kinds of toxins and scary stuff. But so can Nature! What about that little super-poisonous frog? Or the botulinum bacteria for that matter, which produces the toxin they use to make botox - 1kg of the toxin is enough to kill the entire human population on earth.

Genetic engineering is one thing. Genetic altering is another, but similar in many ways, and happens all the time. Regardless of which is it, it's not automatically dangerous. Get your facts straight, internets. We don't need to be perpetuating non-scientific stuff like this and unnecessarily scare people. *sigh*

Have YOU nominated your Favourite Female TV Characters for AfterEllen's Top 50 Favourite Female TV Characters list? Here are my picks (So hard! So painful! So many awesome ladies who didn't make it!):

Title: small respite
Author: fallon_ash
Pairing: Jaime Murray/Lena Headey
Rating: Mature
Word Count: 950
Disclaimer: I don't own them, I don't know them, this is in no way a commentary on who they are as real people (other than the fact that they'd look so hot together).
Summary: "Jaime wants to kiss that grin off her face. She’s only had the alcohol in her body for 20 seconds, so she knows that logically she can’t blame it (yet), but there’s something about standing in the chilly mist with a smug (gorgeous) woman, after a night like tonight."
Author's note: To sakuracorr for her birthday! Happy Birthday! Thanks to lovesthesoundof for looking it over!

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( small respite )

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Title: Sleepless
Author: fallon_ash
Fandom: Warehouse 13
Characters: Emily Lake
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~1000
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Spoilers: 3x11 - Emily Lake
Summary: A study in Emily Lake. Assumes AU after certain events of the episode, self-explanatory.

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( Sleepless )

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Title: tomorrow will come soon enough with all its troubles
Author: fallon_ash
Fandom: Warehouse 13
Characters: Myka, Jane, appearances by Pete and Claudia
Rating: G
Word Count: 1105
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Post-ep for 3x08 – The 40th Floor, mood piece more than plot.
Author's Note: Thanks to sakuracorr for beta!

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( tomorrow will come soon enough with all its troubles )

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Found on the back of an old shopping list in a corner of my bag:

"It feels like forever. There are no clocks on the ship. The computer can time experiments that are time-sensitive, and for everything else people sort of keep their own pace."

I wonder whose POV it is. I wonder what ship it is. The Oddyssey? Moya? Serenity? Antares? The Love Boat? But surely they all have clocks... maybe there's been a malfunction and they've been stranded (whoever they are)? But the fact that it "feels" like forever implies that it's not actually forever, so are they going somewhere far far away? I wonder if I had a pairing or a plot in mind... intriguing.

THIS WOMAN DOES THINGS TO MY INSIDES WITH HER VOICE.

11 TV Characters I Love More Than Anything - Really, I just wanted an excuse for another meme. And every once in a while I list my top 10 hotties, but I did that not too long ago, and then AfterElton had a thing about 'TV characters you wanna marry', so I thought about that, but I realized that really, most of my favourite TV characters I don't necessarily wanna marry, so 'love more than anything' in this case mostly refers to how much affection I feel for them, how much watching them be awesome makes me all warm and fuzzy, how sad it makes me when they're miserable (tho of course there's a huge overlap with hotties and favourite shows etc). It's crazy how much I love these characters. Pictures under the cut!

( 11 TV Characters I Love More Than Anything )

New layout is... new. I've needed a new one for a while now, but I'm not sure I like it yet... we'll see if it grows on me (the color is a little cold), or if it will change again in the immediate future... fallon_ash

I need to finish my write-up on the season premiere Warehouse 13, but dang, every time I go back to re-watch the episode (for scientific research purposes, mm-hmm) I get lost in *SQUEE*!!! My show! My show is so awesome!!!!