I got dreams so wide like a country mile

I remember way back when I was young and green in the ways of web design, I wanted to re-do my website and learn from it at the same time, I started looking at web design blogs and they were all talking about the importance of creating table free designs. I had come in half way through and missed out on the establishing discussion so I was somewhat mystified and I ended up posting to my LJ saying "What is it about table-free design? Why is it good?" People linked me to a couple of posts and I got started from there and was converted pretty quickly.

I feel like I'm in a similar place when I ask the question "What is the point of fanfic archives?" If I've got a DW account with all my fic on it tagged under fic, do I need an AO3 account? What's the motivation behind building AO3. I feel like there are historical reasons for this stuff that I, so far, don't get. Anyone suggest where I can get started finding out? I am asking from a genuine desire to learn - I like the design and I've uploaded a couple of stories, but I'm not sure I have figured out the reasoning behind it yet.

Title: Next time
Fandom: Spooks
Summary: Ros needs someone to trust, Adam needs someone to be honest with. After the events at the barrier, they both decide to take advantage of the invitation.
Pairing: Adam/Ros
Rating: Err not sure. Non-graphic descriptions of sex. What does that count as?
Notes: I basically knew I would have to write this fic as soon as Adam said "Next time, trust me!" and Ros replied "Next time, don't lie to me!" in 5x10. For a while, I toyed with making it my bondage, held down fic for kink_bingo but I couldn't make it fit the characters and I'm glad I kept it the way I did, now.

( They break the water within seconds of each other. )

Title: Walking on down
Fandom: Spooks
Pairing: Past Adam/Tom
Summary: After Tom's name has been cleared at the end of 3x01, he needs someone to help him come back to the real world. ~1200 words.
Notes: I guess this is kind of h/c but the h is from the episode! I was interested in the fact that Adam immediately believes in Tom when he appears so I wondered if they had previous connections. Unbeta'd so do feel free to nit pick if you notice any mistakes. Title from a RHCP song called Slow Cheetah I had playing while I was writing this - "Walking on down to the burial ground, it's a very old dance with a merry old sound."

( 'You know where the shower is,' Adam says firmly when they get inside and gives Tom a tiny push to get him moving in the right direction. )

Title: Trust issues
Fandom: Merlin
Summary: "Merlin doesn't turn to look. He can't take his eyes off the look of growing horror in Arthur's face, off the eyes, now blue again, which he just saw flash gold. Very carefully, braced, he reaches down again, groping and grasping for the warm solid weight of his power. There's nothing there."
Rating: Arthur/Merlin PG-13
Notes: Yeah, I'm going to declare this finished now. It's not perfect, but I think it does most of what I wanted it to. It's also much longer than I thought it would be! Takes place somewhere after season 1, I guess.

( Merlin swears as the damn fire fails to light for what feels like the hundredth time and he drops the flint again )

It's very odd re-reading works in progress after you've left them alone for a couple of months. Bits that I thought were really heavy handed and would need to be pruned and edited later are actually much lighter touch than I thought.

In other news, there is a beautiful spider web covering the whole outside of my window with the spider in the dead centre. It's glinting in the sun. Also, I should be working and I haven't actually added any new words to aforementioned WIPs yet. But I think I'm going to.

Caught up with Merlin last night. Not sure I like the arc for this season, which seems to be basically Arthur taking Merlin for granted and Merlin feeling under appreciated presumably until he gets to the point where he's tempted to change sides. The dragon bargain could be interesting though. I would have liked for Arthur to find out about the magic in ep 1 and then have a series about how that affects their relationship (and I thought the story was nicely set up for that from about half way through) but I guess it depends how many series they're wanting to do overall. Also I found the cutting at the end of that episode very odd and confusing - it looked like they were saying Merlin had lost and then apparently he hadn't. Felt a little too much like just lying to the viewer rather than being subtle, I guess.

Can anyone recommend me some software I can use to rip DVDs of TV shows to individual AVIs which will just produce one file per ep without me having to do anything special?

I'm still in shock from the fact that TW is good, but points to note... ( ... )

Oh, also, Torchwood, you FAIL at being a sekrit organisation. Many times over.