Minion of the Universe

02:29 pm: I Has a Sweet Potato
You know, a lot of times I write up random posts and then don't post them. But Best Beloved just called me, and I could not really explain why I was inarticulate about sweet potatoes, so I said I'd go ahead and post this. That way, she can read it at work and know just what kind of day it has been. (Short version, for those who do not feel like reading the whole post: ARRRRRRG. Fucking sweet potatoes.)

The longer version, summarized in conversation form:

Dog: I am starving.
Me: Actually, no. You aren't starving. You get two very good meals a day. And treats. And Best Beloved fed you extra food while I was gone.
Dog: STARVING.
Me: I saw you get fed not four hours ago! You are not starving.
Dog: Pity me, a sad and tragic creature, for I can barely walk, I am so starving. WOE.
Me: I am now ignoring you.
Dog: STARVING.
Dog: Did you hear me? I am starving.
Dog: Are you seriously ignoring me? Fine.

[There is a pause, during which the dog exits the room in a pointed manner.]

[From the kitchen, there comes a noise like someone is eating a baseball bat.]

Me, yelling: What the hell are you doing?
Me: *makes haste for the kitchen and finds dog there*
Dog: *picks up entire raw sweet potato, which is what was causing the baseball bat noise, and flees for the bedroom*
Me: *chases dog, retrieves most of sweet potato, less the portion which has disappeared into dog's gullet*
Dog: See? STARVING.
Me: ...That can't be good for you. It's a RAW SWEET POTATO.
Dog: I had to do it. I haven't been fed. Ever.
Me: You realize you aren't normal. Normal dogs don't steal raw sweet potatoes.
Dog, sadly: I was badly brought up.
Me: Yes. Yes, you were.
Dog: By people who starved me.
Me: Oh, no. I am not doing this again.
Me: *exits the room, bearing sweet potato*

[There is a pause.]

[There is a noise like someone is trying to eat a baseball bat very very quietly.]

Me: Oh, for the love of GOD.
Me: *heads off to the kitchen*
Dog: I am not eating a raw sweet potato.
Me: You have sweet potato parts all over your snout.
Dog: But you don't actually SEE a raw sweet potato, do you? So maybe that's just - um. A birthmark.
Me: Did you seriously eat a whole sweet potato?
Dog: You don't listen. I told you, I wasn't eating a sweet potato.
Me, searching around fruitlessly: Look. NO MORE SWEET POTATOES.
Me: Oh, what am I saying? This is you we're talking about, here. *goes to hide all the sweet potatoes that are left - which isn't many - in the fridge, because some people cannot be trusted*
Dog: *attempts to look thwarted*
Dog: *does not succeed, because her tail is wagging so hard small cyclones are forming in the kitchen*
Me: *has a very bad feeling about this*

[There is a pause, during which I do not even bother trying to return to what I was doing. I just stand in the computer room, waiting.]

[There is, as I wholly expected, a baseball-bat-eating noise.]

Me, stomping back to the kitchen: OKAY. GIVE ME THE DAMNED SWEET POTATO.
Dog, looking up guiltily: What sweet potato?
Me: THE ONE IN YOUR MOUTH.
Dog: Oh, did you want this? I just, um. Found it. Lying here.
Me: *confiscates the sweet potato and deposits it in the locking trashcan*
Me: Let us say no more about this.
Dog: ...Nooooo! They be stealin' my sweet potato!

[I attempt to remember what I was doing before the sweet potato episode.]

[Some ten minutes later, I succeed, and return to it.]

[NOT ONE MINUTE LATER, I hear a noise with which I have become all too familiar.]

Me, bonking head on desk: Arg.
Me, arriving in kitchen: How did you even get another sweet potato?
Dog, smugly: I have my ways.
Me: Are you punishing me for being away for several days? I was at a FUNERAL, you know. It wasn't FUN.
Dog: How would I know? You didn't take me. You left me here with only one human to look after my needs. One human is NOT ENOUGH.
Me: *shuts dog in bedroom, conducts a sweep of the kitchen to track down all remaining sweet potatoes, wipes up random sweet potato particles from floor, eradicates all traces of sweet potato from house*
Me: *lets dog out*
Dog, sulkily: Oh, so you think you've won.

[I watch her go about her business with the same sense of overwhelming doom that heroines of Victorian novels get when they meet Count Sinistrus Grimblack for the first time.]

[Half an hour later, there is a wetter, juicier eating noise, as though someone was eating a very moist baseball bat.]

Me, wearily: What NOW?
Dog, hunched over the remains of a butternut squash: *says something garbled because her mouth is full*
Me: Okay. Fine.
Me: *stomps over, empties entire vegetable bowl into trash*
Me: WE JUST WON'T HAVE ANY ROOT VEGETABLES ANYMORE. THERE. ARE YOU HAPPY?
Dog: I'm not even remotely sorry. I told you I was hungry. And you went to a funeral without me.
Me: ARRRRRRRRG.

[A half-hour later, there is another baseball-bat-eating noise from the kitchen. The dog, who apparently does not know how to win gracefully, has found another sweet potato, or possibly caused one to materialize from the Rift.]

Me, hauling chewed sweet potato parts from the mouth of a dog very reluctant to part with them: Oh my god how is this my life?
Dog: Don't you think it would just be easier to feed me?
Me: EVERYONE GO TO THE BEDROOM AND STAY THERE. EAT NOTHING.
Dog: Actually, I feel...um...not so good.
Dog: *throws up* *vomit is very bright orange*

[Unfortunate details ensue.]

Some time later:
Me, attempting to rescue something from the wreckage: So. What have we learned from this?
Dog: Sweet potatoes are yummy!
Other Dog, looking thoughtful: I should pay more attention to crunching noises. Sweet potatoes are probably yummy.
Me: I need a lobotomy.

And that, Best Beloved - and anyone else who made it through that - is What Kind of Day It Has Been.

FUCKING SWEET POTATOES. ARG.

[ETA 6/22/2007: Hi! I can't reply to comments on this entry any more; I'm reading them all, and loving them, but responding is beyond me. So:

If you'd like to link people here, feel free.

If you'd like to leave a comment, please do. They make me happy.

If you'd like to repost or use this elsewhere, please don't; I'd prefer you to link. And no commercial use of my work without my permission, please.

If you see this reposted or used elsewhere, I'd very much appreciate a comment or email - thefourthvine at livejournal dot com - to let me know where.

Thank you for reading!

...And, yes, she has had more sweet potato; I gave it to her when the comments on this hit the tenth page. I figured she'd earned it.]

07:30 pm: First Line List
Greetings, first line challenge person! Please note that any first line you fancy is fair game, but I don't have an easy or convenient listing of all my fan fiction, so I've put together this list. But if you happen upon another first line you'd rather use, feel free.

Here you'll find the first lines of all my dS stories (I think) and the first lines of every story I could find that wasn't wholly fandom-specific. I've provided links to the stories, for whatever good that will do you. I've also included slightly more than just the first line in a few cases; for some stories, the first line was just a single word, which isn't all that evocative. But do as thou wilt, of course; you can chop off the rest of the line if you like.

due South Stories

• Ray didn't start out loving moose.
  
• "Fraser?" The voice woke him out of a confused dream of heat and participatory full body contact, and it took him a moment to realize that he was still in the Consulate - and still entirely alone.
  
• Diefenbaker gently nudged open the door to the bedroom, then paused with just his nose inside, breathing deeply.
  
• Fraser took a deep breath as Ray came into the room.
  
• Fraser studied his notes, breathing evenly; staying calm was an essential part of any acclimation exercise.

Other Fandom Stories

• "Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I'm happy you're here today, and I'm happy with the progress we're making." [Mr. and Mrs. Smith]
  
• "We are very interested in your Earthian arts," the one with eight eyes said. [Stargate: SG-1]
  
• Christmas is always a chancy proposition in a country practice. [All Creatures Great and Small]
  
• "Fuck this shit. I'm not kidding. Fuck this shit." [Buffy the Vampire Slayer]
  
• "'Lo." He didn't sound dead. [Sports Night]

06:43 pm: Story: A Friendly Warning for Those Considering Playing Shadow Hearts: Bangkok Nights [Penny Arcade]
Title:A Friendly Warning for Those Considering Playing Shadow Hearts: Bangkok Nights
Author: littera_abactor
Fandom: Penny Arcade
Rating: As far as I'm concerned, if you're old enough to read Penny Arcade, you're old enough to read this.
Notes: This will only make the slightest lick of sense to those who know Penny Arcade. Knowledge of the Shadow Hearts video game series will also help. For your convenience, and as a sneak preview of Shadow Hearts, here is the strip in which Gabe and Tycho play Shadow Hearts: Covenant. If you're at all fond of gay porn, you probably want to check out that strip; everything it says is quite, quite true. And if you like that, brown_betty has quite the compendium of further PA strips for you to enjoy. Join the party! The Gay Penny Arcade Party!
Thanks: manasseh and lucia_tanaka beta-read this and encouraged me. (Came up tails, Lucia!) But none of it was their fault; please hold them harmless for all that follows.

( That's not the joke. This is something you actually do. )

01:56 pm: Not-Fandoms and Me: A Sad Tale of Slash Corneas
So, cereta asked people to tell her what obscure books or movies or comics or whatever we've come across lately and thought, "Yuletide fandom!" And the thing is - well. I can't really do that. I'm handicapped by a litle thing I've heard called slash corneas (although really it ought to be slash occipital lobe, because it goes deeper than just my eyes).

See, once upon a time, I had never heard of slash. But I was still a slasher, and the proof is in everything I read obsessively and repetitively between the ages of 10 and 14 (Georgette Heyer, Wodehouse, Asimov's I, Robot, Moby Dick, John D. MacDonald, and on and on and on, believe you me). It's not just that I see now that it's all wonderfully subtextual and slashy, it's that I saw it then. I just didn't know the name for the dynamic that fascinated me so.

But now that I do know what slash is, and why it fascinates me, and I have Best Beloved as my partner in crime for the slash hunt (kind of like a treasure hunt, but at the end there's glorious, glorious porn), I see slash everywhere - so much so that I really couldn't answer cereta's question without copying down most of the contents of my library and DVD collection.

As an example, and to answer said question, I dug up the rest of this post, which I wrote three weeks ago but decided wasn't worth posting. (Yeah, that happens. A lot. You all should be very grateful that you're spared 80% of my rambling; I expect, at minimum, an e-card in thanks. Maybe something with a tasteful puppy motif.) But, hey, if Lucy needs distraction, I want to give it to her, so - here's my Not-Fandom I Saw Slash in Recently.

~

I'm watching a documentary - Best Beloved gets anime from Netflix and I get documentaries; it's just our thing - called The Cutting Edge. It's about film editing, and it's fascinating in its own right. I totally recommend it to anyone who likes either slash or vids, and if you like both, get it right now.

Because it's not just educational; it's also the slashiest thing I have ever seen. Film editing, it turns out, is slashier than due South and The Sentinel combined. No. It's more slashy than that.

We are, as I write this, thirteen minutes in. And we've already had to pause to sketch out the obvious RPS begging to be written between D.W. Griffith and his editor, James Smith. I can't quite capture the insanely slashy descriptions of their relationship - you'll just have to watch the documentary for yourself - but the salient facts are these:

1. They were together basically around the clock in the studio, "working" late into the night on the film shot during the day.
   
   
2. They were joined at the hip.
   
   
3. And when Smith got married to another editor during the shooting of Intolerance, Griffith gave the two of them the weekend off.

I'm sorry. There's a whole story in there - the desperate 2 a.m. blowjobs, Griffith's abrasive personality, Smith's yearning for conventionality and his feelings of suffocation under Griffith's rising fame and creative obsessions, the introduction of Rose, Smith's relationship with Rose, Griffith's rising jealousy desperately suppressed, the weekend off that Griffith spends drinking in the studio - I mean, it writes itself. Right? Right? (God, I hope I'm not alone in this. Slashland is a better place to live when you have neighbors.)

And then Ridley Scott says that picking an editor is like getting married, and of course my brain goes immediately to "a partnership is like a marriage, son."

And then Quentin Tarantino talks about how he wanted a female editor on his first movie, Reservoir Dogs, because he thought she'd be more nurturing and less aggressive, and -

Okay. First, Best Beloved says, "Mommy issues! Quentin, your mommy issues are showing."

And then I say, "Is it just me, or does he talk exactly like Rodney McKay?"

And he does. He so totally does. The first time he shows up in the documentary, when he's trying to dumb down editing so that the (idiot - this is never stated but clearly implied) audience can understand it, he's got the Rodney-explaining-things-to-Elizabeth tone. Later, he's got the hand gestures, the inflections - it's just, it's fucking terrifying how much he sounds and moves like Rodney McKay.

So BB and I discuss this for a bit, and then I say: "OH MY GOD. AU. Rodney's a director, John is the editor!"

And then we get to Tarantino's description of the editing of the date scene in Pulp Fiction, where he loses it and starts flailing his hands around (I was afraid someone would get hurt, seriously) and says stuff like, "And sometimes I get annoyed with her for not reading my mind 100%, all right. It's not good enough that she reads it 80% of the time, all right." (One thing he does that Rodney McKay does not do, thank god, is say "all right" at the end of every fucking sentence until you want to beat him to death.)

Sally Menke, the editor from Pulp Fiction (and Reservoir Dogs) says, "We work very intensely together and it's kind of amazing that we still like each other. If I was with my husband that long, I don't think I'd like him that much."

And then comes another director/editor pair, Alexander Payne/Kevin Tent, and Payne is saying that making a movie is exhausting. After he's written the script, gotten the financing, cast the movie, directed it, etc., he's so happy to get to the cutting room because he can finally start making the movie. "It's like I've washed up on shore."

Tent, his editor, says: "It's so hard to be a director. It's hard on the set, by the time they come into the cutting room the first week, they're usually half the people they were when they started out, you know, they're shells of the people they were. And, at least in my cutting room, I try to make it very easygoing and try to heal them back into shape so that they can get to work on the movie." I just - am I the only one who hears the plaintive voices crying out for slash there?

(By the way, Payne and Tent told a story - in different interviews, but they cut back and forth between them telling it precisely the same way, and, hello, MORE SLASHINESS - about editing Election; for a pivotal scene, Payne wanted to cut it one way - like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, with swelling music and very long close-ups on each face - and Tent wanted to use dozens of very fast cuts, and Tent ended up getting his way via bribery.

I'm sorry, is it just me or can you hear Rodney saying, "No. NO. John, I'm the director, and we're going to - it's going to be just like -"

"Rodney, if you say The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly again, I'm going to -"

"It's perfect! Come on - the drama, the swelling music, the long, long shots -"

John lowered his head and let it rest on the edge of his table. "Rodney. No."

Rodney folded his arms across his chest, raised his chin, and pouted. John had always found the expression ridiculously endearing, but since Rodney usually pulled it when John pretty much wanted to strangle him, it tended not to be really obvious. And Rodney - well. He was Rodney.

John closed his eyes. Right now, he didn't need to find Rodney endearing. He needed to find Rodney a new job. Or maybe he just needed to find himself a gun.

"'Genius.' 'Stunning vision.' 'One of the most compelling, fresh, and creative directors of our time,'" Rodney said, using his interview voice. "'His movies define a generation.'"

"And who cut those films?" John went right ahead and answered himself, since Rodney wasn't going to. "I did. And who argued with you about the flying motorcycle scene? I did. And the sex scene in the shower? I did. And the alien hives coming alive? I did. And I was right. And I'm right about this, and it's 2 a.m., and I know you've been through three vats of espresso but some of us need sleep, so - look. You know I'm right. Stop fighting it."

Rodney sighed heavily, the classic put-upon genius, and said, "John. You're not seeing my vision here."

"I'm seeing your vision fine. The problem is that you aren't hearing me tell you it sucks."

John didn't need to be able to see Rodney to know that he was leaning forward now, his arms open, his hands framing a widescreen. "John, just picture it. Okay, so he comes in, and his -"

"Rodney. Please. I will pay you money to just let me cut it my way."

There was a pause, and John cracked one eye open. Rodney was wearing his thinky face.

"How much?"

"Fifty dollars."

"Not worth it." Rodney sounded smug.

"Seventy-five."

"Nope."

"Rodney, I'll blow you. Just let me fucking cut it my way."

Another pause, and then Rodney said, "You'll - seriously?" His voice cracked on the last syllable.

John lifted his head up all the way; suddenly he was a lot less tired. He looked Rodney up and down, head tilted, inspecting the goods, until Rodney's face started to fall, and then he said, "Yup. After you let me make the cut."

"God, just - do it, okay? Do it already." Rodney obviously couldn't figure out what expression he was supposed to be wearing or how he was supposed to be acting, and he'd settled on a fascinating combination of truculence, anger, amusement, disbelief, and hope. But his face was flushing and he didn't know what to do with his hands, and even someone who wasn't an expert speaker of non-verbal Rodney would know what that meant.

John reached out to his board, tapped two keys, and saved his work. Then he turned to Rodney, licked his lips, and smiled.

I mean, it's not just me, right? You can see it now, right? Oh, god, please tell me you can see it; I don't want to be all alone in the land of Slash Everywhere.)

And Payne says, "I think editors are like sly politicians." I mean - hello! JOHN! He sucks at working with the natives, but with one individual person? If that person is Rodney? YES.

And then, as if this documentary wasn't wonderful enough, they throw in a little bonus cookie of film wank, with Rob Cohen all, "Fast cutting is like OMG SO COOL and all you people with your forty-second shots are SO LAME and OLD and stuff."

And Martin Scorsese is all, "Listen, noob, you're RUINING THE CULTURE with your fast cuts. You're destroying society!"

And I say to Best Beloved: "Hey, I think I saw this argument on metafandom like, last week."

Seriously, this is the best documentary ever. You need to watch it. And film is so my new fandom. Well, this week, anyway.

~

So there you have it: a look at a post I didn't post, and a discussion of the latest not-fandom I briefly became obsessed with. Plus, hey, it's a handy exemplar for the Slash Brain Diagnostic Test. (This would be the example for the "very severe" diagnosis, for the record.)

Okay. Time to send me the e-cards saying, "Thank you for usually sparing us the unfiltered contents of your brain. Please return to this policy ASAP." (Remember: puppy motif! Or, or, maybe wombats, if you can find them! Or red pandas!)

12:12 am: Are You Ready for the Zombie Hordes?
Following in the wise footsteps of 30toseoul, I have done a thorough investigation into:

The State of Readiness of My Home for Zombie Attack

Structurally: Our house is earthquake retrofitted so it could probably withstand a substantial amount of zombie battering, but it also has large front windows much less likely to survive the initial assault. (Upside: they'll come in through the windows and immediately get tangled up in the shoe rack and the mystery box we keep just under those windows. This will give us valuable moments to escape. Disorganization is a survival trait, y'all.)

Weapons: Horrible, unless you count the dogs, in which case poor. (One dog would be terrified. The other dog would almost certainly view the zombies as convenient snacks and chewtoys, which would mean we'd need to keep her away from them. Even Labs can be made sick by the rotting flesh of zombies, although you could never convince them of it.) Otherwise, we have no weapons.

We do have several large, sharp kitchen knives, though. And we have a large number of indestructible dog toys, including numerous Galileo bones. You mock, but our dog chews these until they closely resemble Levallois flint axe heads, only with a much lower fracture potential. They are entirely capable of drawing blood - I have several scars from them, in fact - and they are also bulky and heavy. Tied to a haft, they could make serviceable, albeit stone-age, weapons. We also have glass bottles that could be broken in emergency. (The good news: if it turns out to be vampires instead, this house is very well equipped with garlic.)

Zombie influx: Would not be high initially. We are not near any cemeteries. However, once the brain-eating started - this is Los Angeles County. Nine million people live here. Many of them are already lacking significant brain sectors and would thus make easy zombie prey. The zombie expansion factor would certainly be exponential, so early escape would be a must. (This means we will likely die, because we have never been able to do anything in a hurry.)

Initial position: Moderate. We would probably be alerted before the zombie hordes began their local rampage.

Street position: Average. We are located on the middle of the block; I have to assume that zombies would begin at the ends. And, frankly, we would not be at all sorry if they started with the people on the corner, who have the annoying teenage son and who put up the anti-gay marriage signs during the election. Although those people may already be zombies; it would explain a lot. I would feel a little bit bad if the zombies began at the other end of the block; the teenage boy down there may have a garage band, but surely death at the hands of a zombie is a high price to pay for mangling Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit at high volume every Saturday for your entire high school career.

Human traffic: Very low. Nobody walks in LA, after all. Upside: we have high street traffic, and local drivers are very accustomed to using their vehicles aggressively. (Downside: with the beach cities so nearby, many of these people will be deeply concerned about their finish - "I just had it hand-detailed!" - and thus reluctant to ram zombies. They can most effectively be deployed using the famous "baby to the wolves" maneuver.)

Other exits: Good. We have three doors. The zombies are unlikely to discover the back one. And even if they do, they're going to have problems with the door handle. Everyone has problems with that door handle.

Retreat position: Poor. We have to run out the side door to get to the garage. This means exposure to zombies. And this is LA, so retreating without a car is basically impossible.

Escape route: Poor. The freeways would be jammed, and the zombies would be roaming along yanking humans from their aluminum casings and snacking on their brains like it was a cement-based smorgasbord. (Many of them will disappoint the zombies. It is a proven fact that most people remove their brains for safekeeping before using an onramp.)

Defensive base: Unlikely. Our best option might be to flee to Compton or South-Central, where people will be better armed. Another option would be to flee to the nearby mall. Everyone gets lost in there; zombies would be doomed to spend their entire unlives endlessly circling the fountain and trying to go up the down escalator.

Acquiring more weapons: Depends. If we retreat to Compton or South-Central, it's a possibility. Also, because we live in an unincorporated area, there's a gun shop right nearby. (And that creepy surveillance equipment store. That might make a good defensive base, come to think of it; I bet the owners have a really solid zombie preparedness plan.)

Collecting the troops: Poor. This is LA. Nobody lives near anybody.

Riding it out: Depends. If we retreat in the right direction, there are some hotels with kick-ass security and a lot of amenities.

Special weaknesses: One person in this household - and I am naming no names, although I will note that I'll have to go take a shower and a sedative after I finish typing this up - has a zombie phobia. She may prove to be a liability during zombie attack, unless she goes all berserker, in which case she will be useful for covering the retreat of the saner residents. She'd want it that way, really.

GENERAL ZOMBIE READINESS: Poor.

CHANCE OF BECOMING ZOMBIE KIBBLE: High.

STEPS FOR REMEDIATION:

• Commence training dogs in zombie attack. (Suggested command word: "BRRRRAIIIIIINS.")
• Purchase ranged weapons in bulk.
• Line lawn with pointy sticks; zombies are stupid and will step right on them. (Downside: mailman is also stupid.)
• Ally with the neighborhood seniors; they are, if my experience at my voting station is anything to go by, very likely to survive through sheer orneriness. (Downside: sheer orneriness is not just deployed against zombies.)
• Investigate entrances to nearby elementary school, with special focus on defensible areas; try to think up something harmless to tell the police if caught so doing.
• Attend neighborhood council meeting and distribute zombie readiness brochures. (Downside: attending neighborhood council meeting likely to be unbearably painful. May be able to mitigate this through effective pharmaceutical deployment.)
• Obtain maps of local cemeteries.
• Purchase frozen brains to use as decoy. (Downside: no good can come of asking a butcher if the brains are "zombie-fresh.")

Are you ready for the inevitable zombie invasion? Evaluate your preparedness today!

02:53 pm: The Once and Future Warning
[They say context is for the weak. So I'm weak, so what? This is a comment I made in someone else's friendslocked post. liviapenn, this repost is for you.]

WARNING:

This story has words made of letters, and sentences made of words and punctuation and spaces. It has paragraphs and dialog and characters and a plot.

The following items may or may not be included in this plot: Sex. Sex involving men and/or women in numbers totalling no more than 17. Masturbation. Mutual masturbation. Gratuitous display of manly flesh. Gratuitous display of womanly flesh. Gratuitous display of flesh that does not acknowledge divisions of sex or gender. Tattoos. Weapons porn. Violence. Thoughts of sex and violence without any kind of cathartic follow-through. First contact. Alien lifeforms. Aliens with needs. Kink. Cliches. Decadence. The decimalization of currency. Current events. Electricity. Ancient cultures. Major scientific advances. Male pregnancy. Female pregnancy. Dog pregnancy. Dogs and cats, living together. Cats and cats, living together. Religion. Bad religions. A lot of references to Night of the Hunter. Telepathy. Dragons. Vampires. Zombies. Evil children. Big guns. Psychics. Clones. Holograms. Slime. Jelly. Peanut butter. Sandwiches of evil. Tossed green salad with caramelized walnuts and pears. Feasts. Famine. Fruit sex. Bee swarms. Facts of dubious scientific accuracy. Facts of dubious mythological accuracy. Wings on things that you wouldn't expect to have wings. Hands in new places. Time travel. Time bombs. Blonde bombshells from 1940s movies. Recapitulation of the plot of Spartacus. Slavery. Torture. Prison. Oysters. Bathtubs. Bath salts. Unhealthy dietary preferences. Unhealthy life choices. Unhealthy minds. Unhealthy bodies. Spontaneous healing, followed by a terrifying regimen of complete and total health. Fast cars. Loose women. Looser men. Intoxicants. Sharp suits. Sharp blades. Blunt weapons. Blunt speech. Low jokes. Sunken ships. The lost continent. Marine mammals. And everything else that has ever or will be ever in my head.

Now. Don't say I didn't warn you, okay?

12:15 pm: My Savage Breasts
It's official, y'all: my boobs require their own zip code.

( There's boob. There's boob-o-rama. And then, apparently, there's me. )

01:57 pm: Rant: Me and My Tampons
Note: This post contains discussion of feminine unmentionables. Those who have issues with this - or who are deeply disturbed by the normal cycles of the female human body - should skip right over this one. (And probably start some therapy, but that's just my guess.)

Recently, the manufacturer of the tampons I buy changed the packaging. For the record, these would be Kotex Security Tampons (note the clever use of "security" right there in the title - I mean, to me that suggests that they shoot mace from time to time, but the important thing is that we girls know we can count on Kotex), brought to us by the fine people at Kimberly-Clark. The package used to have kind of a purple theme going on - you know, the kind that says, "BOYS: DANGER. THIS PRODUCT IS FOR GIRLS. If you purchase it, you will immediately be emasculated by a team of top drugstore surgeons." Kind of unnecessary, because I promise you no male has ever accidentally purchased tampons, just on impulse or whatever, but I was used to it, anyway.

Now the packaging is white, accented with a single red tulip. The message is, "Ladies! This product is to staunch the flow of blood before it reaches your girlish white underthings, or, god forbid, pants." Apparently the manufacturers don't know that the last time any of us wore white during our periods was when we were 13, because frankly their products are not quite that reliable. ("Why is she getting married in red?" "Why do you think?") But, again, whatever. I kind of resented the packaging change, yes. I tried not to look directly at the box, yes. That tulip pissed me off at a time when I was, frankly, already really prone to being kind of bitchy, yes.

But eventually we all get over our resentments. So today, I read the box.

Let's just say the healing didn't begin, okay?

( Why? I'm glad you asked. )

07:43 pm: Fic: In the Zone, SGA fusion, R
Title: In the Zone
Author: Littera Abactor
Fandom: SGA (fusionish)
Rating: R
Pairing: Multiple
A/N: This is for svmadelyn's 13 Challenge. I guess you could call this Chapter 1/?, but it's complete as it stands. Unbeta-read; I mean, it's a 48-hour challenge, so we have to make these sacrifices in the name of speed, right?

( In the Zone )

Tags: fic, fic: sga, sga

03:35 pm: WiP Amnesty Fic: Mating Rituals in the Pegasus Galaxy (SGA, McKay/Sheppard, PG-13)
It's wip_amnesty day, and in celebration, I am dragging out some of my never-to-be-finished stories. This one was one of those stories. You know, the ones that are great fun to write, but then prove to be somewhat less of a story than you'd hoped. It's actually basically finished; I got as far as looking for beta-readers before things happened, and then other things happened, and then I just...I lost my enthusiasm, basically.

*pokes story sadly*

So here it is: my attempt to cram every single cliche in the aliens-make-them playbook into fifteen pages of story.

Title: Mating Rituals in the Pegasus Galaxy
Author: Littera Abactor
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Pairing: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,150

( I am not having sex with you because some alien math paper got you hot. )

Tags: fic, sga

09:23 pm: My Life as a Dork: Sex and Hygiene
I spend a lot of time covered in toothpaste and thinking about sex these days. Yes, these two events do occur at the same time. No, I don't have a fetish.

See, I opened a new toothbrush recently.

I replace my toothbrush roughly as often as the manufacturers say you're supposed to, and I am not what you might call a savvy, educated, thoughtful toothbrush shopper. I buy several at the same time (like, three for Best Beloved and three for me), and my criteria are:

1. In any given set, mine should all be similar in color, and that color should be different from Best Beloved's. No toothbrush co-mingling in this household, thanks. Ick.
   
   
2. They should be all different brands and styles.
   
   
3. They must be cool. My definition of coolness as applied to toothbrushes is, "really unnecessary add-ons, given that the product is intended merely to brush one's teeth." Like, I want multiple bristle colors. I want the package to go on and on about the weird angle of the toothbrush, and how it is scientifically proven to be the best damn angle a toothbrush can have. I want a sleek contour grip, ideally with several textures of plastic. If they sold a toothbrush with the Batman logo and a special plaque-fighting batarang shape, I would buy that one instantly and uncritically.

So basically I stand in the toothbrush section and pick shiny things up at random (this applies to more of my life than you'd think, actually). This is how I ended up accidentally buying an electric toothbrush.

You would think that a person would know if she was buying an electric toothbrush, but the thing is, this one doesn't look any different. The package was slightly larger than usual, but the toothbrush inside looks just the same. And it has four colors of bristles in three separate materials, so I was pretty much in love with it at first sight. I would probably have bought it if the package said, "Attention: this toothbrush will kill you."

It was not until I opened the package that I realized it was electric. (Even then, I didn't, you know, actually read the package. I noticed it was a little heavier than a usual one. And then I looked at it and thought, huh. What are these two little button-like things right here? Well, this one doesn't do anything, but that one - whoa. At that point, it was pretty obvious that the other one was the off button. And then I went to show Best Beloved, because a battery-operated toothbrush isn't a secret you should keep in a healthy marriage.)

It's not a bad toothbrush, per se. It's not the best design on the planet, maybe, but it works, and the vibration certainly adds an interesting extra wrinkle to the dental hygiene experience. It's just - okay, I feel like I'm brushing my teeth with a sex toy, for one thing. That's not a relationship I'm comfortable having with my teeth. For years, they've bitten whatever I told them to bite and I, in return, have brushed and flossed them and sometimes taken them to the dentist. And it worked, you know? We were in a good place, my teeth and me. But now I'm massaging them in a way that seems, well, a little too personal.

It also leads to unfortunate thoughts while I'm brushing. Like, this morning I spent a couple minutes thinking about all the teenagers who are going to have Experiences of Sexual Awakening with one of these things. Because, okay. If I want a vibrator, I can just buy one, but teenagers have a harder time with that. Anyone can buy a toothbrush, though. (Anyone can also buy mouthwash, which was the Oral Product Most Purchased by Teenagers for Nefarious Off-Label Purposes in my youth. Note for any easily-influenced individuals out there: ew, ew, ew.)

I really hope they remember to use the right end. Attention, teenagers: if you're going to masturbate with a toothbrush, use the non-bristle end. Bristles are nice for teeth, but your more personal regions generally do best with something less scratchy. (And, wow. How awful would it be to have to explain that no, it isn't beard burn, it's bristle burn?) Also, please have some class and buy your own toothbrush for your private, non-dental uses. There is no relationship so close that it's okay to masturbate with something that that person will later use to brush his (or her) teeth. I mean, unless it's a shared kink, in which case I won't judge. Much.

So I think these thoughts, about the various uses of a vibrating toothbrush, and then I'm done and it's time to rinse out my mouth. Which is where I encounter the major design flaw with this thing, the flaw that makes me wonder if it is intended to be a marital aid, and the toothbrush part is just a decoy. Because it's really, really hard to turn it off while it's still in my mouth. The buttons are in the wrong place, and you have to press them very hard, and that's hard to do while the thing is vibrating. So I end up taking it out and then turning it off.

My mouth is of course full of foam at this point. Also, I'm still mostly thinking about sex toys. And half the time I'm not fully awake. So, naturally, little specks of foam fly everywhere, for the entire thirty seconds or so it takes me to find the off switch. And also I swear out loud about this, and remember what's in my mouth? Well, I never do, and I end up getting foam all over my chest.

In short, I managed to purchase an appliance that turns me from a mature adult fully capable of achieving responsibility for her own dental care to a revolting pervert covered in toothpaste.

Yay me. And a double yay goes out to the fine toothbrush designers at Oral-B. I'd write a letter of complaint, but I don't want to jeopardize those Experiences of Sexual Awakening. Far be it from me to stand in the way of people achieving intimacy with their oral care products.

Tags: real life

12:52 am: Comment Fic Archive
A Certain Person has requested that I put all my comment fic in one location, and to hear is to obey. So this is all the comment fic I can remember writing since the beginning of August, 2005. (Plus the two from my own LJ that I had conveniently tagged. Tags: your friend and mine, but probably mostly mine.) If anyone knows of any other comment fic by thefourthvine or littera_abactor, I'd appreciate a pointer. In particular, I distinctly remember writing surplus/deficit at some point over in norah's LJ; anyone who knows where it is, please please tell me. It was my very first attempt at porn, and I'd like to - I don't know. Frame it, maybe.

I've made a few corrections to these, mostly for typos and so on. I may or may not turn one of these into a real story at some point; that's the other reason I'm getting all of this together, so that I have a bunch of choices should I decide I want to expand something.

Future comment fic, should there be any, will also go here. In other words, I won't be spamming.

( The Ratings Made Them Do It. SN, PG. )

( Naked. In My Bed. SV, PG. )

( Cookies. SGA, PG. )

Tags: fic, sga, sn, sv, weird

03:02 pm: Joss Whedon: Alien Overlord Bringing About the End of the Human Race
kantayra's recent post (Which you should definitely read right now - seriously, you'll find it, well, hmmm. Stunning would be the word, I'd guess.) was a revelation to me, because it explained the entire course of my life. I don't just refer to the brilliant, incisive explanation of why I read slash - although, oddly enough, I have never seen the sixth season of Buffy, but probably I was traumatized by remote or something. There's so much more. So very, very much more, if you take the concept to its logical conclusion.

See, there was a time in my life when I dated men; these days, I live with a woman, the famed Best Beloved. A part of that change can be attributed to my realization that dating men and dating women ended in the same place: me having sex with a woman. I just decided I'd rather do it without a guy watching. (There were other, larger parts, that mostly had to do with a) enjoying having sex with a woman and b) being in love with one, but most likely I was fooling myself about that. The human mind has so many layers of denial, you know?)

So what is it, I used to ask myself (often at parties featuring a bunch of guys who did not know the meaning of "oversharing" after four drinks) - why do so-called "straight" men want to watch two women get it on? I had many theories for this, ranging from "it's hot" to "who knows what motivates other people?", but I see now that I was wrong. It was Joss Whedon. Of course. I should have known. (It might've helped if I'd heard of Joss Whedon at the time; see what not watching TV will do to you?)

Because, OK. Season three of Buffy contained a major plot arc that caused serious, lasting emotional trauma to men - specifically, men who are attracted to sexy "bad girl" types instead of virginal blonde slayers with worrisome taste in shoes. These poor guys were into Faith - just because of some inherent personal preference - and the writers spent the entire season convincing them they were evil and wrong for liking bad girls instead of good ones.

And every time it looked like Faith could be redeemed, like there was a shred of hope for her, the writers slapped it down again - and, in the process, slapped down all the straight men who thought she was hot and were desperately hoping for some verification, via mass media, that their preferences were right and good. Until, eventually, they began to identify with her - they were told they were evil for liking Faith, and Faith was evil, so it is any surprise they'd get confused?

And then Faith heads over to Angel, where there's one final attempt at redemption. That, of course, goes astray, because loving the bad girl is wrong wrong wrong in the Whedonverse.

And so where does Faith end up? In prison. Where she can only have sex with other women.

Net result: these poor once-straight men, whose only crime was thinking Eliza Dushku was really kinda hot, are now trapped in a lesbian lifestyle. Except, of course, they aren't equipped for it. So all their sexual fantasies start to feature two women getting it on. Eventually, they turn to lesbian porn and start pressuring their girlfriends to have sex with other girls, and those women are so stressed by the experience - even if they seemed to be having fun at the time - that they end up actually dating girls, and loving girls, and possibly identifying as bisexual or lesbian or queer.

(Which leads inevitably to reading slash, of course, but that's a whole other story.)

My point is: the season 3 BtVS writers have crushed the sexual identities of a whole generation of men and women, induced widespread interest in twisted, wrong, gay porn, and very likely brought about the extinction of the human race.

Or, at any rate, the extinction of that portion that can be irreversibly, permanently traumatized to the degree of changing sexual identities by a fucking TV show.

I won't miss them.

Mmmm. Faith.

Tags: fandom: wank

06:12 pm: Fic: Intervention with the Vampire (Angel the Series, gen)
Title: Intervention with the Vampire
Author: Littera Abactor
Fandom: Angel the Series
Rating: PG
Size: 7,000 words/~40kb
Author's Note: This takes place between the end of season two and the start of season three.
Thanks: To raveninthewind and fanofall for their kick-ass betas. (The errors that remain are my own stubborn fault.) Also, thanks to raveninthewind for the fabulous title. For the record? She claims she does not have title-fu, but she lies. She's like Jackie Chan with the titles.
Feedback: Oh, yes. Please. All types and kinds.

( Intervention with the Vampire )

Tags: angel, fic

06:15 pm: Fic: Life Without Fraser, or How Ray Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Moose
Title: Life Without Fraser, or How Ray Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Moose
Author: Littera Abactor
Fandom: due South
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Rating: PG
Author's Note: This was originally commentfic; it's being posted here in a very slightly modified form because norah deserves to get her way all the time. It's dedicated to lyra_sena, who pretty much came up with the title and whose comment inspired the whole story in the first place. Totally un-beta-read and un-proofread; if any of the usual suspects wants to volunteer for that thankless task, I will be filled with fannish love.
Spoilers: Maybe mild ones for Call of the Wild.
Feedback: Please.

( Life Without Fraser )

Tags: ds, fic

05:59 pm: Girls
The recent spate of genderfuck stories triggered something of an epiphany for me.

I'm no good at being a girl.

I'm happy to be female, yes, and I can't even imagine wanting to be male, but the distance between "female" and "girl" is huge.

Actually, the difference between "female" and "girl" is me.

I can't dress myself. I finally learned what a slip was for this month. I suspect a real girl would've found this out when she stopped wearing show panties. But, hey, better late than never, right? So this morning, with my newfound knowledge, I looked at the skirt I was planning to wear and thought: I bet I'm supposed to wear a slip with this.

I'm not wearing a slip. People who are going to be traumatized by a glimpse of the outline of my thighs are just going to have to look away, because I have enough problems with just bras and panties. Last week, I stabbed myself in the mouth with an underwire. If I wore a slip, I'd probably die from it.

I don't own any designer clothing, which is good, because I always end up machine-washing everything anyway. I don't know where to shop, even if I wanted to shop, which I don't. In the last week I've spent a freaking fortune on clothing, because I had literally nothing left that could be worn out of the house unless I wanted an indecent exposure citation. A lot of what I bought doesn't fit me. I will probably wear it anyway. Well, I mean, I don't have anything else to wear, so there's that. But also, I just can't face any more shopping.

I can't accessorize. I don't wear jewelry, except my earrings (which never change), RayK bracelet (which never changes), and watch (which changes once a year, because that's how long it takes me to destroy a watch). Over the years, various people have given me lovely jewelry, some of it with precious stones, all of it gold. I don't even know where any of it is.

I own one purse. I hear real girls own several, and actually change purses to match their outfits. Or maybe to match their shoes. In which case I'm in luck, because - OK, technically I own a lot of shoes. My mother, who still believes that someday her youngest child will transform into a real girl, keeps buying them for me. But since I only wear one pair, I don't think it matters that I have twenty.

I can't decorate. I mean, I do know that we need new dining room chairs, since two of them are broken and the other two make ominous noises if you sit in them, or move them, or if one of the dogs walks into them. And a new dining room table would probably be a nice thing, too. But I also know that, realistically, I'm never going to choose to shop for a table as long as I still have elective dental surgery to while away the hours, so we'll only get a new one if this one actually collapses. And even then we'll spend two months sitting on the floor and eating off just the top of the current table, with the broken legs stacked in the corner, because that's how long it will take for us to develop the will to go shopping. Actually, two months is a low estimate; after the movers broke our bed, we slept on the mattress for six months. We'd probably still be sleeping on it if my mother hadn't given us a new bed.

And I can't accessorize the house, either. Our walls contain three decorative items: two framed old maps and one unframed NASA photo of Mars. The latter is taped to the wall. When my mother and sister visit, they point out that I could put lots of nice things here and there and over there, too. My reaction is to stop inviting them over. Real girls would probably actually take the advice. Or maybe not even need it.

I can't make myself look nice. I don't own any makeup, which is just as well, since I wouldn't know how to put it on if I did. I mean, OK, lipstick goes on the lips, right? And beyond that - well, take eyeliner. Do you put it inside your eyelashes? Over them? Around them? And do you wear just eyeliner or eyeshadow, or do you need both? Obviously, if I did own makeup, I'd either never wear it or I'd end up with blush on my eyelids and mascara in my hair. But I never will own any, because I don't know how to buy it. I know you go to a makeup counter, but beyond that, nothing. I can't even imagine how I'd determine what products and colors to buy.

And my hair? Oh my god. I'm still wearing the same four styles I did in elementary school: barrette, braid, French braid, and wild tangled bush that cannot be tamed by any earthly force. It might help if I got my hair cut more than once every three years, but that's never going to happen, because I can't face a hairdresser more often than that. They expect me to have actual thoughts about my hair, and to know about gel, and mousse, and hair spray, and to be able to use these products to transform my hair from the aforementioned bush into something pretty. But I don't know how I want my hair cut, and I can't use the products they make me buy. I honestly try. I do what I'm told. I put them in my hair, and I scrunch or whatever, and then it's a sticky wild tangled bush.

I can't bond or comfort or coo. When Best Beloved and I go out to dinner, I see these hordes of women out together, clearly having just come from an office, exchanging tastefully wrapped little gifts and making weird bird noises about them ("How key-yoooOOOOoot!"), and I...I'm pretty sure I'm not even of that species. It's not that I don't want to be, or that I choose not to be - it's like the option never even existed. Our evolutionary paths diverged long ago. If I worked with those women, I would be the weird asocial unkempt creature who would only be invited to girls' nights out because I could fix the computers without calling tech support, and if they didn't include me I might stop recovering their files when they accidentally deleted them. After a while, though, they'd feel a lot safer inviting me, because they'd learn that I would never accept, because I don't even want to socialize.

Really. That's how it went the last time I worked in an office.

So. I'm bad at being a girl. This isn't the end of the world, right? I'm good at other things, and if I had to choose between being able to set up a wireless network and being able to accessorize, I'd go with the network. It's just - I thought I would know all this stuff by now. When I was 15 and I didn't understand how to be a girl, I figured it would come with time, that it was a natural part of a being a grown-up.

Which brings me to the second epiphany I had today. See, after I decided again not to bother with a slip, I finished getting dressed, walked to my car, drove to a building, and walked into that, where I realized I'd forgotten to bring the form that I needed, so the whole trip was a bust. As I turned to leave, a very kind person tapped me on the shoulder and pointed out that my shoes were on the wrong feet.

In the parking lot, I walked face-first into a tree.

I'm starting to suspect that, bad though I am at being a girl, I'm even worse at being a grown-up.

Tags: real life

12:30 am: Fic: Untitled (Crossover, PG)
Title: Untitled. But I'm open to suggestions.
Author: littera_abactor
Fandom: Angel, mostly.
Author's Note: Written for the Slightly More Than 24 Hours Crack Crossover Challenge, in two hours just before the deadline; totally unbeta'd or even proofread, so let the reader beware. I mean that, and not just because of the probable errors; there's also, like, plot and characterization and, um, other issues.

It's posted here as an object lesson, really: why I should never sign up for challenges due in less than a week.

( If you click here, you will likely regret it. )

Tags: angel, fic, hp, vampire chronicles

11:07 am: Movie Meme
I don't do memes at all over in thefourthvine, which is my other LJ, for the .0001 readers of littera_abactor who didn't know that. So I've never actually done a meme. But umbo passed this one to me directly, the first time I've ever actually caught a meme. And I wanted to see what writing one was like; I mean, how can I be a real Livejournal user if I've never memed? So, without further excuses, explanations, or exculpations, I bring you: the movie meme.

Total number of films that you own: 52 on VHS, 66 on DVD (actual films, not yoga or TV shows). This amuses me. See, back when Best Beloved and I first started living together, I believed it was beyond weird, maybe even vaguely immoral, to buy movies; my family of origin had not owned even one. Best Beloved, though, came from a household where they didn't bother renting a movie; if they were interested enough to watch it once, they just bought it. After some discussion, BB pointed out that, you know, my sister and I rented the same two movies most weekends for three years while I was in high school, and if we'd just bought them, we'd have saved money that could've gone toward popcorn. Or a downpayment on a car. Which was absolutely true, and irrefutably sensible, and eventually convinced me of the wisdom of buying movies we'd watch several times. Still, it's strange to me that we own so many.

The last film I bought: Um. Actually, I think it was The Fast and the Furious.

The last film I watched at home: See, now, I'm not sure what counts.

If just recorded visual entertainment counts, Trigun volume 3; Trigun was originally added to our Netflix queue for Best Beloved, but it has proved to be so wonderful that I'm watching it too.

If a semi-documentary about a "sport" counts, NASCAR Winston Cup 2003 Year in Review, which has been my most interesting entertainment experience this year and is so worth seeing, even for people who aren't trying to write TFATF fan fiction. It's like - no, it's better than - the ethnographic films I watched in my anthropology class as an undergrad; it's a look into a culture more alien than the Jivaro, at least to me. And this DVD makes it clear that NASCAR is neither sport nor entertainment but rather a culture, group identity, and cultural identifier all in one. Let me try to explain that statement. OK, first, there's almost no actual racing on this DVD; the closest it comes is one close finish and several major wrecks. The DVD spends more time on race tracks than on racing - the tracks are anthropomorphized, given personalities and goals and interests. ("This track was really trying to prove itself this year," for example.) Pit crews also get a goodly share of the screen time, and there's nothing quite as gripping as watching people rebuild a car soon to be driven at very high speeds with...duct tape. (True and fascinating fact!) There's also a lengthy segment on the Iraq war from a very pro-war perspective, with American flags and American theme songs and drivers talking about soldiers and jets soaring through the sky. And speaking of those drivers? You're just supposed to know who they are; they aren't identified in text at the bottom of the screen or, for the most part, in the narration. Neither is anyone or anything else. You need more prior knowledge to understand this DVD than you do to get an A in organic chemistry, and I am if anything understating that. Amazing. Fascinating. Beyond weird. Everyone should see this DVD.

But if that doesn't count, then Pitch Black. This makes me sound much more into Vin Diesel than I am. But I fear no wrong impressions. Well, in Livejournal, anyway. (And if I could vid, I would so do a bondage TFATF vid using Dom as the, well, sub, and using shots from Pitch Black. The Diesel characters look similar enough, and some of the settings are similar enough, and Diesel is in some impressive bondage gear. Best Beloved and I spent much of the first part of the movie pointing out shots that would fit perfectly into, say, a "Master and Servant" TFATF vid.)

Five films that mean a lot to me: I could use a number of movies for this list; it's hard to choose. But to me the obvious choices are the ones that changed me as a movie viewer. In essence, then, this list could be subtitled "The Remedial Education of a Movie Watcher."

1. Highlander and Nomads, which for me count as one movie. These are the previously-mentioned movies my sister and I rented most weekends for three years. I have watched each of them, conservatively, 80 times, probably more like 120. I still don't understand them, because this was before I learned how to watch movies, but the fact is - these are the first movies I really saw. (I was not taken to movies as a child, after an unfortunate incident in a Disney movie with the tear-jerker scene; it was the only scene I really understood in the movie, so it came out of nowhere and hit me - and, by extension, my parents - like a blow to the jaw. I cried for the rest of the movie (and the rest of the day), completely missing the happy ending because my eyes were swollen shut and in any case I didn't believe the world could contain happy endings at that point. For days afterward, I continued crying whenever I was awake. After that, my parents decided that it would be better for all concerned if I didn't see any movies until I was old enough to drive myself to them; I was not even allowed to watch G-rated movies in school.) And if my mind blended together the dialog and the individual scenes I understood from both movies to create one really peculiar and not terribly coherent story? Well, at least I was trying. Give me points for that.

2. Aladdin. Another movie I watched a lot - at least 50 times in the theater. This wasn't fangirl behavior, either. (Aladdin fangirls? Yikes. Scary concept.) My boyfriend at the time loved going to movies but didn't much care what we saw. I wanted to go to something familiar and safe. And I liked that this was a musical; the songs helped me key into the story and gave me something to look forward to during the narrative parts. So we saw this and saw it and saw it and...suddenly I understood it, understood how it was telling a story. I know now that I still missed a lot of the basics, but the point is: this is the first movie I watched as a movie, as coherent visual storytelling.

3. The Big Chill, Night of the Hunter, and Breakfast at Tiffany's. These go together, because between them they taught me how to understand movies; for lack of a better description, these taught me to watch the way a movie is directed. I don't watch movies solely for character or plot; movies fall apart for me, into scenes and themes and the choices the director made. These three films taught me that every shot is carefully selected and designed and therefore every shot has a purpose and a reason for being the way it is, and that you can best understand the movie by watching that, by watching not the story but how the story is told. These movies made me into a movie watcher, as opposed to just a person sitting in an audience in a theater; after they taught me how to see films, I never again had to spend two hours in the dark thinking about something else and only pretending to see the movie.

4. Dark City. This was the first movie that worked for me on every level. I can and do watch this for the direction, the setting, the plot, the characters, whatever - no matter how I choose to see it, it works. This was also the first movie in which I was able to see the characters as people. (In general, to me, characters in movies look like - well, not like people. There's something wrong with them. In some movies, the wrongness is so pervasive I can't stand to watch it in any mode other than the director's-choices one. I have no idea why this is, but it might have something to do with my reliance on body language rather than facial expression for non-verbal communication. In many cases, actors in movies will be saying one thing verbally and an entirely opposite thing with their bodies; I'm sure I'm not the only person this confuses. But for whatever reason, mostly characters in movies look like, well, people pretending. There are a few actors who never do this, who always look all the way right, but for the most part they just...don't.)

5. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. And this was the first movie I reacted to as a fan, the first movie I wanted more and more and more of, the first movie that caught me up in the story, made me experience and believe it. The first two times I saw this, I couldn't watch the direction at all; I was too entranced with the story. It was absolutely unforgettable, seeing this; it was like reading a book with three senses instead of one. I can't explain how wonderful it was, even though I was terrified for the first half of the movie (the beginning, with the hand-to-hand battle, scared the crap out of me) and I had to go see it again so that I could remember the whole thing. Seeing this was just...I really can't even describe it, what it was like to see and feel the story itself. That has never happened to me before or since. I could watch this movie forever.

Which five people are you passing the baton to and why? I'm a rebel; I'm breaking the chain. (Truth is, I haven't the social currency to pass this to anyone. But I'd love it if one of the lurkers - the entry-less - who has friended this journal would respond to this. I, at least, want to know more about you than just your excellent taste in friends.)

Tags: moo, real life

04:11 pm: Fic: The Cetacean Situation (dS, NC-17)
Happy Birthday, lynnmonster! This is for you.

Title: The Cetacean Situation
Authors: littera_abactor and norah.
Fandom: Due South; this is a crossover of sorts with Spider-Man (comics, second movie) and Ultimate X-Men. Don't look for canon accuracy here, though.
Rating: NC-17
Notes:
littera_abactor wrote the ends
norah wrote the middle
And they both rewrote it all.
But lynnmonster deserves all the blame. She started it.
Thanks: To dine, fanofall, and raveninthewind for beta reading above and beyond the call of duty. We love you guys, and we promise the next one will be slightly less crack-ridden, OK?

( Fraser's having an ordinary evening. But meanwhile... )

Tags: ds, fic

12:18 am: Fic: The Art of the Deal (SG-1)
Title: The Art of the Deal (note new title!)
Author: Littera Abactor
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: PG-13. Ish.
Author's Note: This is dedicated to Resonant, but she doesn't know me from Adam and is not responsible for any of it. It's just a mark of my esteem for her. Among other things.
Spoilers: Are you kidding?
Feedback: Please.

( The Art of the Deal )

Tags: fic, sg1