I've been aware of The Hunger Games for a while now (and that it's not a post-apocalyptic Twilight like I first thought), but it took this fantastic Gossip Girl/Hunger Games crossover (yes, you read that right) to finally push it from my mental "to read" list to actually reading it.

I can now say that a three day, three book reading binge on a tiny Blackberry screen without going blind is entirely possible. Not going completely bonkers with the mental casting in my head? Not so much. It's not like I haven't seen stills from the movie, but my brain still fused the books with The Mentalist casting Lisbon, Jane and Bosco as Katniss, Peeta and Gale which made the series unintentionally hilarious at times. My brain also cast River Tam as Annie and Nikita's Percy as President Snow which isn't completely ridiculous, but somehow Finnick is Batman: The Brave and the Bold's version of Aquaman and Mags is Maggie Q in old age makeup. ( Which is to say, I ended up loving it a lot more than I thought I would. )

I finished off my binge with the movie, which wasn't bad, but I don't think it's among the great book to movie adaptations. While I loved that the movie expanded from Katniss's POV so that we could see what was going on outside the arena, ( there were things that bugged me. )

Or, The Adventures of Kono Kalakaua and Her Boys Rec List.

Another list where all sorts are mixed together because I didn't sub-categorize as insanely.

Updated: 3/23/12

( Destruction of government property, that's-- You've been hanging out with McGarrett too long! )

A) Doctor Who/Star Trek: TNG crossover! In comic form, sure, but crossover nonetheless!

I'll be honest, most Who crossovers take place during the Ten/Donna (or Ten post-Donna) era in my head, so part of me is a little disappointed, but I love Eleven and if the cover art is any indication it's pre-"All Good Things"... so YAY!

B) TBTP over on H5-0 better not be playing with my fannish heart. If what everyone's expecting based on the latest press release turns out to be a misdirect I may implode from rage. For a show that's Torchwood retcon in TV form (seriously, the minute an episode is over, I cannot for the life of me recall what happened) I'm getting rather emotionally invested.

C) I realized I had a build up of Mentalist episodes and since I'm trying to stretch out my episodes of Profit I decided to burn the latter off in a marathon. So many things are still bugging me about the show (the team seemingly incapable of solving crimes without Jane, Jane not being jail, and the whole Cho and his informant storyline) but despite that last quibble I rather liked the lastest episode simply because I spent most of the episode in love with Lisbon's un-official investigation look. The ponytail and plaid jacket ♥ I haven't loved her hair so much since season 2. Also, James Frain! Apparently my love for Paul Raines carried through to Grey's Anatomy and now to this. (IMDb tells me I’ve also seen him on Leverage and Law & Order: CI but I don't actually remember those appearances.)

D) So I've started poking around Tumblr and have some questions: Is it all about following tags? Is there some way to actually find fandom Tumblrs that I'm not seeing? Also, are spoiler warnings non-existent over here? I was browsing through the H50 tags and wow, spoilers galore.

WHY DOES THE SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND FANDOM NOT EXIST? (Or at least fic that isn't the adventures of OCs that I don't care about?)

Um, yeah, I've spent the last of 2011 and now the beginning of 2012 watching one hit wonders (or not quite "hits" since they were all canceled after a season) mainly from the 90s and have some random thoughts:

The Flash: The visual style was almost like watching a live action version of Batman: The Animated Series with some 90's flair thrown in. They even had Mark Hamill playing Flash's version of the Joker! Sadly the actual quality wasn't the same and at times the writers seemed to forget that the character was THE FLASH, not Superman.

Space: Above and Beyond: I had forgotten how much I miss this show! Shane is still all sorts of awesome, Cooper/Shane is still adorable and the ending still breaks my heart. On the plus side, I seemed to have forgotten how grating Nathan and Nathan/Kylen are at the beginning.

Moonlight: I remember thinking it was a pity this show didn't come out a bit later to capitalize on the Twilight craze. I also remember not watching this show because of the Twilight craze despite the fact that it had Sophia Myles in it. To combat my post-S:AAB depression, I thought I'd give it a whirl because Sophia is so charming on twitter and Sophia and Alex are hilarious in this interview.

I kind of loved it; it was totally my type of cheesy fun! Though, fandom, where is the Doctor Who/Moonlight crossover in which Beth is Reinette, Mick and Ten meet and proceed to try to out-emo/angst each other over how everyone they love is going to age and die while they live on and while those two compete over who is the saddest panda in the world, Eleven sneaks off with Beth/Reinette because he's fun that way?

And in not 90's TV (but still TV-related because "couch potato" seems to be the theme I'm going with this year) news, I sort of love my mailman this week. I spent NYE hopped up on cold medicine and (apparently) eBaying. Since I often have the most mundane dreams, I thought I dreamt buying Rose's Tooth & Claw shirt. ( It wasn't a dream. )

Also in the mail this week, Series 6 of Doctor Who, new and sealed for $19 shipped! It's not my all time favorite season, but "Closing Time" and it's associated confidential (which hopefully doesn't cut the Matt Smith and James Corden show) are worth it.

Now off to continue the shows that died on Fridays on FOX 90's marathon with The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., Strange Luck, M.A.N.T.I.S., and VR5. I also have Profit and Earth 2 waiting and will probably try to track down SeaQuest DSV before it turned into 2032 and season one of Sliders. I will most likely still be in the 90's by the time 2013 rolls around.

I've been catching up on my shows and lately I'm either madly in love with what's going on, on the verge of a rage-induced coronary, stressed about the direction the writers are going to take or some combination of the three. This can't possibly be healthy.

First the rage:

Hawaii Five-0: This show used to be something I could count on for bringing the pretty, awesome fights and the team being hilarious and sometimes hilariously incompetent. ( Then season two happened. )

And on to shows that I'm less rage-y about and more in love with:

Gossip Girl: I ♥ Blair. I also 'ship Everyone/Blair so no matter how ridiculously happy the Blair/Louis/Chuck/Dan rectangle thing is making me, unless Blair chooses herself (or Serena) I will inevitably be slightly heartbroken by her choice.

Nikita: Much like Blair, I 'ship Everyone/Nikita and completely unlike Hawaii Five-0, the writers seem to have read my mind ( and decided to give me what I want. )

I'm a bit a behind on my returning (Nikita, Mentalist, Grey's Anatomy and others) and British (Doctor Who, Torchwood) shows because of my rediscovered love for DCAU Batman. I've been doing a "Bruce Wayne, this is your life" style re-watch -- started with Batman Beyond, then worked my way through Justice League and Justice League Unlimited and am currently on Batman: TAS.

( I had forgotten how heartbreaking B:TAS continuity is. ) Cartoons should not be making me sad!

I also gave some of the non-DCAU animated movies that I haven't seen a try. I think it's safe to say that I only like Bruce Timm's character designs. I liked Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (especially Batman being Superman's best friend, whether he likes it or not) but was occasionally distracted by Superman's look. He got off easy compared to Amanda Waller. Where did her neck go?!

Unfortunately I didn't like either of the Justice League movies. I kept on expecting The New Frontier to veer into Watchmen territory when I wasn't being horrified by Batman's character design or being sad that Jeremy Sisto made a terrible Batman. I'm still undecided on whether it's a good or bad thing Batman wasn't really in the movie much. I spent most of Crisis on Two Earths torn between thinking this could have been a really awesome JL/JLU bridge movie and puzzling over why Batman's design seemed to age him into a senior citizen. It's so wrong when I think New Frontier!Batman is too pudgy and Crisis!Batman is too geriatric to pull off JLU!Batman's awesome Omega Beam dodge.

...it's no secret that I'll watch bad movies for actors I love (and sometimes the badness just makes it even more fun to watch) but you need to actually be in the movie! What's with all these movies hyping the fact that Maggie Q is in them but then having her do next to nothing?

Priest was such a let down. I wasn't expecting much, but I was expecting more Maggie. There's something terribly wrong when The King of Fighters is the best of the Maggie movies I've seen simply because she's actually in more than 15 minutes of the movie! (And it's a sublimely cheesy blend of bad acting, ridiculous story, even more ridiculous casting and fighting.)

*waves to flist* Hello, yes still alive! Just watching bad movies and Law & Order reruns because apparently my memory is so poor when it comes to episode specifics that two years after my first complete re-watch most of these episodes are almost new to me! (And I think that those in charge of the last few years could've taken some notes from season 8 on how to weave re-election and personal storylines into episodes in interesting ways that do not make me hate beloved characters.)

Meme time!

1. Comment with "the odds are ever in your favor."
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Post the names of five fictional characters and your thoughts on each.

Ganked from redbrunja who gave me 'G':

( Thoughts on characters from Torchwood, The Mentalist, Twin Peaks, Gossip Girl and Justified )

Lately I've been 'shipping Ronon/Keller from Stargate: Atlantis. It's actually kind of appropriate that I'd 'ship it –- it's doomed and features yet another Keller that I adore that fandom seems to hate.

What worries me is that I have no idea when or why I started 'shipping it in the first place. I don't watch the show (any incarnation) and I don't remember looking up anything SGA-related before this. I don't even remember how I stumbled across them in the first place. It actually is genuinely worrying as there is clearly a giant gap in my memory.

And speaking of giant gaps in my memory, I decided to give Twin Peaks a re-watch, which I've been meaning to do ever since the Psych homage. I know I've watched the show before, but I apparently have forgotten everything I've seen. Other than who killed Laura Palmer, everything's new to me, which sort of makes the show more interesting – there's a lot of storylines and characters that I don't care for, but I have no idea what's going to happen, so that's a plus?

In other less worrying, but still inappropriate 'shipping of characters from shows I don't actually watch news, I'm kind of on the Neal/Lisbon bandwagon. Neal being Neal Caffrey from White Collar (the show that I don't watch). I blame this vid.

In not at all worrying news, Catherine Tate on US television! Tennant's failed pilot was also for NBC, so clearly the universe is slowly trying to make a Tate/Tennant US project happen!

Spent the beginning of this week laid out by some sort of bug. Have progressed past the chills and headaches that makes me want to practice self-trepanation and have moved on to coughing up a lung and barely being able to speak (probably because of all the coughing).

However, this did lead to some time to catch up on TV! (So, yay-ish?)

1) ( Like the subject quote implies, my love for the Romola Garai/Jonny Lee Miller version of Emma is ridiculous. )

2) ( Because I heard that Alana de la Garza is bringing Connie Rubirosa over to Law & Order: LA I decided to check out the show and was surprised to find I loved it. )