Clark, if there's one lesson I've learned from you ...

 The stockings went live earlier this week and I was really excited to find some great fic recs, a shipping graphic and a drabble in mine! Had to share the sweet story that was written so more eyes see it.

Can I have this dance? by navaan . It's DCU Dick/Babs, a bit of quiet domesticity. I miss those two, so this was a nice gift.

 First on the reading front, I was answered on Tumblr that Ao3 does have a subscription feature that is an update alert system like fanfiction.net. Setting it up was easy but did make me realize I was only following one ongoing on Ao3. Most things I've read there have been one-shots/drabbles.

It would be nice of LJ/DW to have a tag tracking feature but maybe I am old school in this thought as the majority of fics I read in my fandoms are not on either of these two platforms. Maybe i'm still living in the past in looking here for things to read.

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The one annoying thing about reading is you're never guaranteed of a good story every time and sometimes when you're looking for that pleasant distraction you only get more misery for company. Two stories updated and they both ended with heavy relationship drama cliffhangers leaving things in not great situations and that was horrible to read at the time. lol.

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On the writing front, there is a The Walking Dead story that is itching me to be written. I've been watching the second half of S2 that I never did see and there is just something I've always been left wanting between Rick & Shane, with Lori and the baby mess. Outside of that moment in the first season that flashed back to when Rick got shot, we never really got to see them not at odds or without tension. I never thought the show would entice me to write but here we are with me thinking about it. I have a few ideas ahead of it but I might use it as a cleanser to take breaks on between stories.

Outside of that I have a chapter for an old story written but it needs to be edited and I am holding myself to having multiple chapters written before I start publishing again so that might be in the hole for awhile. I have at least two pressing story ideas ahead of it but I do hope to pick things up in this area by the end of the month.

Why do so many sites make it so difficult to make web pages look good?

More places should look at tumblr because of its wide selection of themes and then letting users make their own and have it offered. I hadn't even realized there were so many options before this weekend, I usually just pick one of the featured templates but so much more there.

And now that I have a much more refined knowledge on html/css I can tweak things to my liking.  Anyway, this all came about because I decided to do a much needed overhaul of my lj design, and I was just disappointed by the lack of resources for customization, especially compared to Tumblr.

Of course this probably has more to do with LJ & DW being older designs but I spent way too much time just searching for flexible templates to alter for my liking. Thankfully I found one that gives me the ability to have a two column design and a header without much fuss. Probably the last design I'll use here on LJ unless they have some vast system improvement because it will be easy for me to customize the colors and change the header for whatever theme I want.  Which at the moment is Glee-ified because that show owns me right now.

I found myself going over so many lines of html that after fixing my LJ I only halfheartedly started on my DW page. I'll probably save that for the next weekend. It just kills me that changing my tumblr theme took .. maybe 10 mins... while all this takes hours upon hours.

Which reminds me, did LJ get rid of the automatic uploading of mood themes? The link I had bookmarked has since been deleted so I had to put all that in manually which took forever.

Another sign in that I've been somewhat derelict with my LJ, I am starting to go through my email and answer back comments that I meant to, days, weeks, months ago. LOL. But I'm doing it now, SO THERE.

Does anyone need/want a dreamwidth invite? I have quite a few that I haven't shared before just sitting in my email inbox. I don't know if its still needed to start an account but if you do then let me know. :)

Shock here but I decided to take a web development night class this spring and it has me itching to do some transforming to my LJ and DW journals, which I gave up on doing a long time ago. So I was wondering if anyone knows of a site that details what needs to be left in the code for the journals to still work that way I can really try to manipulate the look/feel.

I doubt I'll ever have time to make icons like I once did so it's back to scavenging through communities for icons. Anyone got any recs of big icon places? I should probably do a search through DW too for communities to follow, last time I did that was back during the old LJ exodus of what 2 or so years ago?

I've been using Safari as my main browser for at least a week now and I'm wondering if any other Safari users are having problems with livejournal or if it's the plug-in I'm using (which is great otherwise - no ads!) because I'm not able to select any tags from the edit tags list (I have to type them in) and I'm not able to change anything on my message menu. Everything works fine on Dreamwidth, so I find it odd that it doesn't on LJ.

My desktop wallpaper for July was a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean with Captain Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth Swann. I think Sparrabeth is one of the few OTPs I have that ended up being a non-canon pairing. I blame Dead Man's Chest for my interest in that ship. Before I was fine with Will/Elizabeth, but then they just had to show me teases of what the other two could be together and well my shipping heart was a goner. Unfortunately as we get farther and farther away from the last movie I see less and less activity with the fandom and this pairing specifically. Sad times.

This morning arrived the Wonder Woman animated DVD that I ordered from Amazon last week.  How successful DC has been with their films lately with New Frontier & Superman/Doomsday before it, I can't wait to watch this one.  I knew it was time to order it with Green Lantern: First Flight coming out already and Superman/Batman on its way.

Lastly a plea to the DC comic gods before I go.  Can we PLEASE stop the fascination of Buddy Baker (Animal Man) with Starfire? Didn't like when it first sprouted up in Countdown and hate it even more now that they keep bringing it back up and not let it die like all bad ideas should. Latest issue of Last Days of Animal Man has Buddy decide to make out with Starfire 15 years into the future. Gah! Honestly, I just want DC to decide once and for all what they're doing with Dick's love life (like that will happen), he proposes to Barbara Gordon only for it to be ignored almost immediately afterward and then he gets together with Starfire again in Titans only to tell her he doesn't love her at all a few issues later. Let's not even get started on the fact that Tim breaks up with Wondergirl rather harshly because DC brings back his dead girlfriend, Spoiler, only for him to treat her like crap (after that welcome back kiss that was quite lovely) and not want anything to do with her. Or that after teasing Bruce/Selina in Hush with him revealing his identity, they step all over that with butchering this incarnation of Helena with having SLAM BRADLEY be the father. WTF!  I think every company not just DC (HELLO SPIDER-MAN) needs to realize that a hero having a wife/girlfriend/companion is not a bad thing and not something that puts the character/plot into a rut.  It's just adding a supporting character and adding another dimension to the hero that is always underutilized. Then again I'm the type of person that would want one of the Superman books to focus on the Lois/Clark reporters aspect of their lives with how Clark's responsibilities and abilities as Superman affects their work and life.

ALSO KILL HUSH PLZ! Tired of this Bruce look-a-like crap. [/end rant]

I'm excited to have an account here.  I don't know if the popularity of DW will grow to be comparable to LJ but I like the potential and it doesn't hurt it's very similar.  Meanwhile I've added everyone on my flist to my knowledge that has a DW account, I'll double check but I've started searching for communities and it's clearly in the early stages regarding content.

Unlike my insanejournal and journalfen account which are purely backups created when an exodus from LJ seemed possible, I think for now I'm going to try to crosspost entries from here to LJ and perhaps import my old LJ entries onto here. Still deciding on that one.  It's a bit of a blank slate but I definitely wish I had more than 6 icon spots, it makes the 15 on LJ's plus accounts seem like a lot.

I took a link htbthomas  posted about layouts and tweaked it about for emeraldstag .  I made it a Smallville theme, with a dark red, with a soft blue and yellow.  It reminded me how much I like tweaking graphics and working in code.

To an exciting future!