In the middle of BBB is probably a ridiculous time for a rec post, because everybody has all the fic they want and is just sort of wandering around with dazed, happy smiles and fourteen open tabs. But when I’m reading so many things I love, my instinct is to rec, so!

This isn’t even a BBB rec list, although it has three BBB fics. It’s 6 months of reading, and, uh, 87 fics. (Seriously, this is fourteen pages in a Word document. I'm a little embarrassed.)

( Non-Bandom: Cotillion, Hitchhiker's Guide, Original & Calvin and Hobbes )

( Bandom: Mostly Panic & My Chem )


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All recs appeared first at this Delicious account.

Oh man, BBB. I feel as though I'll never write fic again, just loll back and gorge on BBB fic.

Very random anniversary! Today is the three-year mark of the first time I mentioned reading fic on my LJ.* Since my embarrassment levels about such things have always been lower than they should be, it's probably also the three-year mark of the first time I read fic. So, you know, more or less my Three Year Fandom Birthday \o/

I am thinking of doing some kind of drabble thing over at my other journal to celebrate, but probably I'll just gorge some more on BBB novellas instead. (Vampire Slayer AUs! Romcom cliches! Superheroes! *dazed and sated smile*)

Actually, let's talk about fannish gorging. Because lately I keep thinking, "Ooh, I must save this fic, in case it disappears!", and then thinking, "... but I can't even bear to reread any of the Harry Potter fic I saved, back in the day, so is there a point?" Which is interesting, because Harry Potter is the only fandom I've been in as deeply as Bandom, but it's also the only fandom I've ever truly fallen out of. I don't actively look for fic anymore in any of the little fandoms I kicked around in between HP and Bandom, but if fic shows up on my Delicious network (and there are several people I follow there purely because I know they'll tell me about new Hikago or Tenipuri or xxxHolic fic), then I'll read it with a small happy cry. Or something. Anyway, the point is that I still like the dynamics in other fandoms, but HP I completely burned myself out on. And I don't know if that was because I tried to keep writing in it even when I wasn't excited anymore, or because I kept reading in it only because I didn't know any other fandoms at the time ... or because I gorged.

Has anybody else found this? Are there fandoms you can't even stand to read in anymore? Was it because you read too much? Is there a way to ensure it doesn't happen?

I'm happy slipping out of fandoms, but becoming allergic to them is an extra kind of sad.

* In a post otherwise devoted to angsty whining, which I will not be linking back to.


ETA: My copy of Demon's Lexicon is in Australia! *Drums fingers in impatience.*

I saw Twilight last night, and ... wow. That's some ... seriously f***ed up hair gel. I don't think I have any other opinions, because ... just wow. Hair.

No, okay, I have other opinions. Mostly it was just so weird. Part of that was the strange sparse energy and minimalist soundtrack, which made it feel as though it was trying to be arthouse rather than a teen romance. The sparkles and the James Dean vampires on travellators were pretty spesh, though. In an Ow my eyes sort of way. The vampires were so strange against their backdrop, like overly-gelled cut-outs superimposed with no consideration for depth-perpective against really rather gorgeous scenery. Plus leaping deer. Slow motion leaping dear.

I don't know, I expected it to be a little less weird and a little more hilarious.

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tangledtale pointed me over to the OTP deathmatch polls currently happening at ship_manifesto, and I've gotten kind of invested. The current poll includes Hikaru/Akira ♥ Also Fai/Kurogane. And also Veronica/Logan, which is actually beating Clark/Lex. Is that impressive? I find that impressive.

This is a call-out to the people on my friends list who have read Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Basically, if you loved it, did you love it straight away, or did it grow on you?

Because I'm about 50 pages in, and according to the back cover Kerouac thought that it was about the ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being, but as far as I can tell the basic premise of the book goes like this:

Everybody in the world is an asshole. Sal, from the depths of his dizzy crush, only *wishes* he was as much of an asshole as Dean Moriarty.

I might not mind it if the book wasn't constantly calling on me to agree about what fierce individualistic sparks they all are; really, just swell guys. But it is a classic, and I know that if I put it down in this mood I'll definitely never pick it up again.

So should I give it more time or give up?

How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier

Teen fantasy. In a near-future world, everybody has an invisible personal fairy. Nobody knows where they came from; lots of people refuse to believe that they're fairies, or even that they exist. Charlie knows her fairy exists, all right; exists, and torments her. Unlike her friend Rochelle, who has a clothes shopping fairy (nobody can find a designer dress marked down 94% like Rochelle), or her crush Steffi, who has a getting-away-with-things fairy, Charlie's is a parking fairy. She's fourteen, she can't drive, and she hates cars. She wants a new fairy.

( Vaguely spoiler-ish )

This feels like a mean review, and somebody is definitely rolling their eyes at me and saying, "OK, but you need to stop critiquing teen romance-fantasy as though it was trying to be literature." I'm honestly not, though. It's only that this could have been a boppy, charming little story, and instead it's a bit soulless.


The Plum Rain Scroll by Ruth Manley

Children's historical/mythological fantasy. When sinister men come looking for Taro's Aunt Piety and she disappears immediately afterward, taking, of all things, her favourite bonsai plum tree with her, Taro doesn't precisely have a plan. He just knows that he needs to help Aunt Piety if he can - even if he's only an odd jobs boy, and even if all he has is a kitchen knife. But in rushing out to save his aunt, Taro finds instead Prince Hachi, who tells him that much more is at stake than he knew - all Idzumo could fall if the wicked Marishoten manages to get his hands on the lost Plum Rain Scroll. Taro, along with a motley collection including a poetically-minded oni, a ghost with a morbid hatred of umbrellas, a sweet-potato lord, a ragged cherry blossom princess with her painfully polite animal companion, and a very impolite roof-watcher, is now Idzumo's only hope for salvation.

I read this when I was about twelve, and I couldn't remember anything except that there were sweet potatoes, some kind of princess, and that I loved it. Rereading, I still love it. The mixture of earnest poetical storytelling and lightly drawn humour is charming and very effective. All of the characters are your favourites at different points. And the dynamic between Taro and Oboro, the young cherry blossom princess, is quite marvellous. Taro is honestly and generously admiring when Oboro does something awesome (which is frequently), and Oboro is unembarrassed and encouraging - in her off-kilter but very practical view of the world - in return.

It was written in the late seventies, and it's a cultural mix of Western and Japanese styles and mythology. It's supposed to be set in a slightly alternative version of ancient Japan, the mythology of which Manley obviously had immense fondness for, but the Western humour and Western mythological tropes crept in possibly without her noticing. So onis are terribly similar to Western trolls under bridges, and the sprightly bent old fairy they meet mentions that fairies are popularly supposed to be sparkly persons with wings, and people make linguistic jokes that are entirely English (and British). With all of the cultural appropriation debate lately, I read with half an eye to that, and for what it's worth (from my comfortable Western stand-point) this didn't ping my discomfort radar. tangledtale pointed out that Japanese culture isn't disenfranchised and oppressed the way many non-Western cultures are, which is part of it; and the melding just felt so similar to things like Fullmetal Alchemist and Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle, which come from the opposite direction of affectionate European cultural appropriation by Japanese artists.

ETA: Have just remembered, this is actually the first book in a trilogy, although it works perfectly as a stand-alone. I remember I read the second one, The Dragon Stone, but could never find The Peony Lantern... In fact I believed Manley had died before completing it, but Google tells me otherwise.

ETA2: Illumination! Apparently three books of a projected quintet were completed before she died.


Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome

Sentimental-comical boating memoir! Three young friends, being agreed that they are suffering dreadfully of various ailments, decide that what's needed is to get away from things and putter up and down the Thames for a fortnight. This, they feel, will buck up their spirits, put a little colour into their cheeks, and keep that dreadful spectre of Work from beating down their shoulders too badly.

So I honestly had no idea how charming this was going to be. Or, rather, I knew it would be funny, because all of the Jerome K. Jerome lines I'd come across were funny, but I didn't realise it would be so ... endearing? Would have so much heart. Or something. I mean, they all rag each other pitilessly, and mock anything that happens to occur to them, but there's this underlying thread of fond good humour towards the whole world. And J.'s poetical sentimentalist passages about the glory of moonlight and the moods of the river and parables of suffering and what not kind of fill me with affection. I don't think that they sit badly with the comical narrative, as I've seen the internet mention; I think they complement it really sweetly. (Although, okay, the history lesson on the Magna Carta went on about six pages longer than it needed to.) Anyway, in conclusion, this slim little book: made of delightful.

I've been feeling kind of weird, lately, discontented and overcompensating, and I think I may have sent some weird emails as a result, and had some uncomfortably twitchy conversations. My point, really, is that it seems to have cleared up this afternoon. I'm feeling pretty human, right now.

That might be because I'm finally all but finished three of my editing assignments, and I can't start the fourth until next Thursday when he explains it to us. The "all but" is because I do not know how to work out what constitutes competition for this picture book, and I need to name actual books. I hung around Dymocks for forty minutes on Friday night, picking things off the shelves, but none of it felt even vaguely similar. I'll have to try again this week. Or walk down to my local in the next two hours; that's possible, and they have a good children's section. Only it's cold outside :(

____

I'm still feeling pretty mopey about the Australian release of Demon's Lexicon being pushed back to August. Unless I don't understand the 30-day rule as well as I thought I did, Simon & Schuster Australia are busily giving away their rights to exclusive distribution; seriously, why? Not that S&S Australia have ever been especially awesome, but still. And I can't even order it online, because somebody compromised my credit card on Thursday and it's been frozen till I get the new one.

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In happier news, sekkritbandomlj cemented her position as my favourite bandom artist by drawing the most ridiculously adorable art for Helen's and my Disney AU fic.

I've been in bandom six months now, I worked out the other day. And I'll probably be here a while yet, but I can feel myself beginning the slide away, too. I wish I couldn't, because honestly, bandom people are awesome. Not just individual people, but the whole culture of generous welcoming enthusiasm. I was rereading somebody's first fic in the fandom last night, and seeing their overwhelmed comments at how fantastic the reaction they were getting was, and just - yes. I haven't seen that in any other fandom I've been in. Not that I've been in a lot, but still. For all the RPF weirdness and all the bitchy celebrity gossip on the side and all the terrifyingness of writing stories about people who know how to use the internet and frequently talk back - for all that, bandom has something special.

I say this even though, as a writer, it apparently brings out everything that is least cool in me, and most about big-eyed stares and kittens and swearing mermaids.

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I finished reading Gaudy Night yesterday, and one of the unexpected interesting things about it was that it was written during the rise of Nazism but before the threat of war, when apparently the most interesting things the Nazis were doing were confining women to their proper place in the home, and conducting experimental sterilisation of the "unfit". So in this book which is all about women not being in the home but at Oxford, and the disapproval of various ordinary people and insane people towards that, there are these bits of conversation with ordinary working men talking about how England needs its own Hitler (to deal with the uppity womenfolk), and educated (although somewhat comical) women talking about how the rest of the world needed to be following Germany's example with this sterilisation business. And - I guess it's just such a different view of Nazism to what I'm used to, because any historical text will talk about the other facets of Nazism, but there will always be the war and the death camps and all the rest of the horror hovering over it. And, interestingly, the text wasn't even especially disapproving of the sterilisation efforts, although obviously it was anti the women-staying-in-the-kitchen stance.

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I've been working on - or at least revisiting - Blue Winnow again lately. I'd given up on being able to really work on it this year, because the study guilt was taking over my life, but then it occurred to me that if I am taking any pressure off myself to get anything done this year, then I can just sort of putter around in the world if I want, without any strain, or any frustration at always having to put it down again. Because I like puttering around in this world. So many times I'm working on something fannish and hunting through my scribble book for a note on something, and I'll find something about Winnow instead and instantly whatever I was working on will look drab and unexciting by comparison. There's a lesson there somewhere, I suppose, but it's an old one. Anyway, I'm currently stuck on some ridiculously thorny plot problems with Winnow, and it's going to be ages before I've teased them out, probably.

____

Doctor Who with clare_a_belle and co tonight. Let's see if I can remember how to be a true Tennant fangirl :-)

ETA: My credit card replacement came, and I've ordered Demon's Lexicon. Thank you to everybody who offered to help out!

Hey hey, so I have a dreamwidth, for what it's worth. I'm using it as a backup archive for my fic (since I didn't like that none of the RPF was archived off LJ), so the username is the same as my fic journal. I may use it for other purposes at some point! I don't know. I guess I'll use it for commenting on dreamwidth posts, though...

I also have 3 invite codes (1 of them courtesy of tangledtale), so if anybody wants one, comment with your email address?

(I don't know, is there anybody who still wants them? I feel as though every third post on my friends page for the last three weeks has been "Dreamwidth codes! In showers! Look, there are more hidden under this rock!")

Norwegian Eurovision boy, pretty much adorable, y/y? I am deeply suspicious of this twenty-three years old business, since clearly he is twelve, but endearing as hell. With a violin, oh god, it was like the team all sat around a table and said "What we have here is the most ridiculously adorable kid with an aw-shucks bright smile and wide speaking eyes, what can we do to make people want to ruffle his hair even more?", and came up with the violin.

*

School is eating me alive. I swear it wasn't this hard last year. But only one semester to go after this! I am pining for the kind of time and headspace where I'll be able to write things longer than 3000 words again.

*

I had a nightmare on Sunday morning, and woke up all fretful and horrible and had to go online and read comfort fic. The nightmare had, you know, ordinary nightmare things, death and betrayal and evil doppelgangers and the living dead, but also it featured a girl who was forced to give her kitten back to the orphanage. Which. Come on, subconscious. There's such a thing as not playing fair.

*

I've called time of death on both of the first two bandom fics I started writing - the Faking It AU and the special agents AU. I am kind of sad, but my characterisation ideas had changed too much, when I tried to take them up again last time. I can't write these boys the way the stories want them written anymore.

*

At some point there will be book reviews on this journal again! Wow, I fail at the internet at the moment. I can't keep up with my friends list at all, I almost never post, and all the interesting blogs on my Google Reader and all the fascinating reading meta posts on my delicious languish away being interesting and fascinating without me, because I barely manage to reply to emails.

Anyway, there will be book reviews! But I'm thinking I'll drop the Month in Books format. I don't like deadlines (ahahaha) and I don't think it's terribly useful to be reviewing absolutely everything I read. Sometimes I just have nothing to say, and the entire review boils down to "Yeah, mostly harmless," and seriously, where's the point?

*

I want an AU where Ryan works in a hat shop. A millinery? Or is that only for ladies' hats? Anyway, in between customers he tries on hats and strikes poses in mirrors and practices expressions he knows he will never have the nerve to actually pull in front of anybody else. OK, so basically this would just be an excuse to write about dozens and dozens of hats, because hats are awesome, right, and so is Ryan Ross' dress sense. Only, OK, maybe in this AU the thing is that his dress sense in ordinary life is completely boring, and he feels grey and like a cipher and lost in the crowd, but when he's on his own he tries on hats and he could almost imagine that he's Somebody.

Two-minute review of Star Trek: The Slashy AU!

OK, so I can't actually remember what the true title is, but we're agreed that was basically what it was, right? Or at least, those of us who are hopelessly fannish and unable to communicate using language that non-fannish people understand agree, right? Oh, whatever, but it was totally slashy. Jim and Spock: instant antipathy and competitiveness! Pushing each others' emotional buttons! Getting in each others' faces! Being visited by wise travellers from the future who tell them that they are Meant To Be! Finally bonding in danger and shared orphanhood! Also sharing the captain's chair! Sharing their crush on the same damned girl.

So it was cute - baby Spock would have to try pretty hard not to be cute - but it was stilll, you know. Star Trek. So still fundamentally cardboard-textured. Cute cardboard, though. I liked the little happy moments as a new familiar character came in (very AU), even though I didn't recognise most of them, because I was never a Trek fan.

We'll maybe mention the sexism bit? We have one speaking member of crew who's a woman. Her uniform includes a mini-skirt. Which, I'm pretty sure this is fidelity with the original, yeah? But the thing is that this is an alternate universe. It isn't a remake of the original Enterprise and anything that they chose to replicate was a deliberate decision, not anything actually forced on them. They could have added another speaking female crew member or two if they'd liked. (Maybe one who wasn't [spoiler] with one of the male leads.) They could have given Uhara a non-insulting uniform. Those would both have been viable options in an alternate universe. (And as far as the mini-skirt thing goes, Kirk got a hairstyle up-date, so they can't have been terrified of changing the aesthetics in any way.) And actually, as this review pointed out, staying true to the progressive tone of the original Star Trek would actually have meant making this world, you know, more progressive than the 1960s' version of progressive. Meaning ACTUALLY progressive.

Still, it was funny and dorky and sweet, and it's occasionally nice to watch a futuristic film in which the Empire is not evil and society is not a dystopia.

Although OK, honestly, my favourite part of the whole thing is still probably grinning at the reactions of bandgeeks:

Ryan Ross: A star trek fan was born
Ray Toro: Star Trek was mindblowing!!!
Frank Iero: Yes Ray, you are correct Sir... i totally feel like i was just blown.

OK, and having now proven that I am massively more of a geek than any of them, I'll shut up.

Okay, happy songs \o/ Who wants to do a happy song meme? Songs that are like the sun coming out, that are like a pure shot of awesome, that make you shrug off all your emo and dance around the lounge room.

Here are three to start off:

Wake the Sun - The Matches
Just kind of makes you want to swing down the street with the sun on your face.

Wish - Arashi
Because j-pop, guys.

Nine in the Afternoon - Panic at the Disco
Oh shut up, this song has never ever not made me smile.

Give me your favourite happy-making songs in the comments? Download links or just the song title! Tell me why you love them!

The basic form of this meme goes that you're supposed to write about the six icons somebody picks for you. I adopted softlyforgotten's interpretation of it, and wrote six sort of fic scraplets. They're silly and self-indulgent, much as you'd expect.

softlyforgotten gave me these icons to write about:

( A picture's worth 50+ words )

Comment if you'd like me to pick six icons for you to write about - however you want to interpret 'write about'.

frankkincense wins at birthdays, you guys \o/ As well as the incredibly charming babbling hex fic she gave me at the time, she sent me a birthday card. And she sent it to the address I'd given her at Christmas, which meant that it went to my mother, who has been absent-mindedly holding it hostage ever since.

She finally sent it on to me, and I got it the night before last, and you guys. Stealth ficlet! It had the most adorable mouse!Brendon ficlet in the world in it. I DID NOT STOP SMILING FOR THE NEXT HOUR.

I'm not exaggerating even a little bit when I say that frankkincense's mouse ficlets are one of my absolute favourite things to come out of bandom. This one is actually based on my pencilmouse icon (*points up*), which is possibly the only thing that could have made me gleeface more.

She's posted it publicly now. I'll wait here while you go and read it if you'd like. I'm not busy.

Pencilmouse by frankkincense ♥

A glitch? Uh huh? No, this is my trusting consumer face, really.

Amazon Rank

Happy Easter! I thought that I could finally write up March in Books (short summary: Charlie Brown collections), but then I thought that I'd write another ridiculous ramble instead.

(Short interjection because the twitter pop-up just told me that Patrick wore glasses on stage tonight! Pete, where would I get my Patrick trivia from without you? Also, there had better be pictures, people.)

Argh, and no, actually this wasn't going to be a Bandom post.

*

Do you want to know a thing I love? I love that new "Report a bot" button. I have reported so many bots. I have no idea why they keep targeting me - surely the fact that I have never friended one back should count for something? - but they just keep appearing in that little Friend Updates box. And then they appear with a strikethrough a couple of days later and I feel that warm Report a bot glow.

*

I took advantage of the long weekend and my Supernatural-hating flatmate being away to watch Season 2 of SPN over the last couple of days. (Ahahaha, of course being alone in the flat was an awesome time to start marathoning a horror show. Anyway.) See that, that's the way to do a season finale. A driving force into the next season, but no ridiculous cliffhangers and no viewer fists of frustrated rage. Also, wow, this season was funny. I keep replaying bits of the trickster episode in my head and grinning to myself as I make a cup of tea, because I'm a huge dork but also because look at them, being all clever and meta! Not that I wouldn't have liked the episode better if it hadn't had an alligator-dismembered corpse in it, but hey. It's a horror show.

There were still gender (and a couple of race) issues that made my fists itch (seriously, another hunter who started out to avenge an attack on his girlfolk? Two Serenity-esque black guys hunting down one each of our heroes with single-minded simplistically-moralistic zealotry?), but the problem is that sometimes they do the gender and race thing right, too, and it makes it so damned complicated. If I didn't have to like this show for so many things, I could be comfortable condemning it for the other things.

Also, damn, do all my favourite characters have to die or turn-evil-then-die? No wonder 90% of the fic out there is Sam/Dean; none of the other good characters survive a season.

I watched the gag reel too, anyway, and yeah, possibly there are other reasons for all the Sam/Dean, and all the Jared/Jensen too. Those guys are unbelievable. But, actually, here's another mini rant for you:

J2 fic, it's written by Supernatural fans, yeah? People who like demons and violence and testosterone-drenched boys who cannot have a conversation involving feelings without threats of bodily harm being involved? So how on earth is all the J2 fic so appallingly sappy? I should have learned last time, but I wanted to read fic after I finished SPN, and I still couldn't face the Wincest, so I went for the RPF again, and just ... no, really. How?

I'm wondering, can anybody rec me any good Sam&Dean genfic? With, I don't know, adventures and explosions and Winchesters being fraternally codependent and self-sacrificing at each other? Because that would be cool, maybe.

*

I've been rolling around reading a bunch of feminist pop-culture blogs lately. Here are four things I love:

=> Feminist and gender theory
=> Pop culture
=> Textual analysis
=> People being witty and funny about things that piss them off

Pissed off funny feminist analyses of pop culture are pretty much the best thing ever, guys.

Although, having read so many witty, pissed off and incredibly convincing condemnations of Observe and Report's charming date rape endorsement, I'm now terrified that Shane Valdez is going to follow up his "I'm excited to see this movie" tweet with a "Wow this movie was awesome" tweet and I'm going to have to stop following him on Twitter.

*

frankkincense and I are currently writing the most amazing email fic in the world. I could try to be modest, but there would be no point. It's amazing. You'll see. Or you may not see, because we may never be able to bring ourselves to stop writing it.

*

I love the way everyone else is clearly also using their Easter holiday to putter around on the internet reading fic. I've had random comments on fics from, like, three different fandoms today.

I bought season one of Supernatural more than a year ago, and I finally finished watching it this afternoon. Except for the second last disk, which apparently doesn't read. Which is incredibly annoying, since taking it back and saying, "It came out of the box defective" comes out lacking in credibility when you do it fifteen months after you bought it.

Anyway, that wasn't the point. What is the point is: OMFG, are you KIDDING me? They seriously went with "... and then they all got hit by a bus the end"? That is ... just so incredibly lame. I can't even say.

I realise that I'm several years late on this, but seriously.

I do finally understand where the appeal of this show is, though. When I bought it, I'd seen the odd episode without having many opinions either way, but I wanted a new SF/fantasy show and I thought I might love it if I watched a bunch of episodes in a row.

I hated it. The violence and supernatural horror that I'd been okay with in small doses was a whole let less palatable when it just went on and on, and the gender issues in this show just freak me the hell out. The double immolation of the Madonna-figure as the impetus for the male heroes' revenge-quest, which turns into a triple immolation when the first Madonna-figure, who is actually called Mary, burns again, as a ghost, and this time it's self-sacrificial immolation ... it's just disturbing as hell, okay.

But I started watching the rest lately, and. Sam and Dean. And the way their relationship and dynamic builds up, and the sense of how incredibly much they need each other and what they'll do for each other, and the interesting ways their dynamics shift with each other and with their father ... yeah. That kind of dynamic is pretty much exactly what I want to do with my characters. And it's really damned engrossing. And I pretty much love them a lot, even though I didn't mean to. And I'll watch the other seasons. How long do I have to wait before I meet Castiel, btw?

_____

I'm feeling weird about the Twitter thing. On the one hand, people keep being really cute, and why is Neil Gaiman all about the bandom connections? He was twittering with Gerard Way about follower numbers (I think) (because they are both enormous dorks), and then he was talking about Amanda Palmer today.

But. Sometimes I just don't want to know. I love the music these bands make, and that's just normal music love that has little to do with the people themselves, but then the actual fannishness about the celebrities - it's such a fragile feeling. They can be coarse or ignorant or douchy, and the whole structure rocks a little bit. And I don't want it to rock, I don't want to know about reality, I just want to be able to stay in the fandom, because the fandom is awesome. And I pretty much don't want to know about their lives, either, because details of celebrity lives, especially rockstar lives, are just so often crass and boring, touring honestly sounds boring as all hell. And I don't even know.

I'm close to just stepping away and relying on my friends list to post about it when somebody does something hilarious or adorable on Twitter. So far they've been pretty good about it.

_____

I think I'm missing the part of my brain that makes me like reading love stories with babies in them. I like real babies, and I like stories with kids, but babies are just ... not interesting to read about. I've started reading three different fandom-beloved baby fics, and only finished one of them. Babies kind of have to be in front of me before I'm willing to believe that watching them blow spit bubbles is adorable and entertaining.

ETA: Ahahahaha, and I've totally just remembered that I wrote one once. A drabble. But still. Babyfic, for Teddy Lupin.

_____

You know what I want to be writing right now? I want to be writing the story where Brendon is an escaped catboy. It also features Victoria the rogue catgirl, and Greta the half-robot with the scary-sunny smile. It has Brendon pushing up into Ryan's hand while Ryan awkwardly pets his ears, and Vicky-T and Greta's doomed love which is not so doomed as all that. It is Very Serious, except for how it's not serious at all, and it would be awesome.

You know what else I want to be writing? The story where My Chemical Romance are all traipsing around this broken apocalyptic wasteland world with explosions and stone ruins and huge rusting hulks and also mutant monsters. Mikey's soul has been lost! He is wandering blank and soulless, except occasionally when he comes back to himself and is confused and agitated, in a Mikeyway way, and manages to tell Gerard enough to give Gerard clues about where he needs to go to get Mikey's soul back. Gerard is travelling with Mikey, protecting him! Only they get cornered by a monster, and Gerard can't fight him off because he's protecting Mikey and also because he's Gerard, but then Frank crashes down from above with enormous boots, glass smashing under his heels, and he's grinning with a crazy light in his eyes. He's a monster hunter! He joins up with Gee and Mikey!

Also Bob Bryar is an avenging angel. With a broadsword. It would be epic.

I am also pretty excited about the idea of writing the Jon/Spencer story in the Drink Me 'verse, which has saboteurs and night-time chases across the communications tower and almost-kisses in the moonlight.

What I am actually writing is nothing, but I'm pretending to work on Blue Winnow. I have a character called Jasmine who has no actual personality at the moment, so I was working on her on the tram, but I ended up with about three pages of notes about her appealingly dysfunctional sibling instead. Huh.

Apparently I'm now the kind of person who gets themselves a twitter in order to stalk celebrities.

I think a part of my soul may have just died? (Come along to the wake ♥) You could give me validation/camouflage by telling me who you are on twitter so that I have real people to follow as well?

I'm blindmouse, which is cool. (And by 'cool' I clearly mean 'vaguely pleasing'.) I like it when I get in early enough on a social networking site that nobody else has my username.

I don't know, I'll probably use it all the time or not at all. Except today, when I have an assignment due, which obviously means that I will be updating it every twelve minutes or so. I expect it to be fascinating. I know you guys are dying to know all about the progress of my imaginary marketing campaign proposal for Sorcery & Cecelia.

Actually, for all that I've bitched about the ridiculousness of twitter rather a lot (although maybe not here?), I think I may honestly like the forced brevity. A thought encapsulated in no more than 140 characters, including creative spelling and appalling netspeak. The new philosophy, Charlie Brown.

My head is a strange and jittery place at the moment, for no especially good reason. This in itself is an excellent reason to not talk much and look at pictures of kittens instead.

One of my favourite LJ communities is ru_cats_daily. Pics are occasionally adorable, but more often quirky and vibrant and awesome. I can't read Russian, and have no idea how to tell who the photographer is for these. So, you know, just a general disclaimer that they're not mine.

( wotthehell archy wotthehell )

This is a fleeting post for a fleeting rec, guys :-) moku_youbi wrote me a timestamp coda to her carnival AU Two of Cups, which is one of my favourite fics in fandom. It's called Four of a Kind and it's GSF (not worksafe) and set a year later. It's gorgeous and hot and uses Spencer's psychic abilities in a really lovely way. Also, Brendon has dreams about Mikeyway's unicorn farm \o/

Because I'm greedy and she mentioned she might do it, I'm still very much hoping for a longer sequel showing us how the characters got from the two pairings to the GSF, but I loved getting another look into this 'verse either way. You should all go read it ♥

For my birthday yesterday, frankkincense wrote me the funniest, sweetest story in the world. Do you guys remember me talking about the tragic lack of babbling hex fics in bandom? Because you guys, Helen wrote me one, and it's everything I wanted from the premise. This is the most endearing Ryan in the world, especially seen through Brendon's eyes, and also has a fantastic Ryan-Spencer BFF backstory going which almost trumps the Brendon/Ryan love story - funny and heartbreaking and warm.

Secrets and Ryan's thought processes and gingerbread, you guys. My heart-eyes, let me show you them.

As Dreamers Do by frankkincense (Ryan/Brendon, One-shot, PG-13)

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I also have shout-outs for scoradh who gave me Brendon playing the accordion <3 (hee!), to clare_a_belle who gave me the most gorgeous poetry compilation, to lilithstorm who gave me the first volume of those The Complete Peanuts books (Eee! Baby nineteen fifties Charlie Brown!) and to tangledtale who gave me an awesomely-cute-and-shifty-looking possum. And to everybody who remembered me or came out last night; you guys are awesome. I'm feeling loved.

Yesterday was really lovely, actually. It started kind of weirdly; I woke up out of what was honestly and seriously a badfic dream. It was some kind of bizarre smutty-disturbing crossover of Harry Potter and Hikaru no Go, and it wasn't that I woke up and went "Oh, that's fucked up" - I knew it was badfic, in the dream. I was really disappointed that that was the turn it had taken, and I was a bit horrified that I couldn't get out of it.

Then I woke up and went online and there was Ryan/Brendon falling star babbling hex fic for me, and my mother called and smiled at me, and I went off to the symphony at the concert hall with lilithstorm and clare_a_belle and lilithstorm's free tickets, and then people bought me cocktails in the evening called things like 'Little Miss Sunshine', and basically my day improved by a million percent.

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I'm seriously making up for having missed Augie March that one time. I went and saw them again on Friday night; they were part of the Moomba Festival free music lineup. It was a much (much much) smaller show than when I saw them at Woodford, but it was rather lovely. They took a while to get into the swing of it, with the crowd so small and so mellow, but by halfway through the set they'd settled into this awesome cruisy atmosphere. They did a far mellower version of 'One Crowded Hour', which suited it a whole let better than the more dance version that they did at Woodford - I know it's their big hit and the crowd demands it, but it's not a dance number - and they did 'The Night Is a Blackbird', which is the only song I'd really hoped to hear at Woodford but didn't. They also did the most beautiful performance of 'There Is No Such Place'; it was gorgeous.

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I love having my birthday on the first day of a long weekend. It meant I could spend the whole day being happy and sociable, and still feel like I had the entire weekend ahead of me to be my usual self, i.e. anti-social and welded to my computer. Which is what I did today, while traipsing around the house in my dressing gown and curling up in my doona.

The Drink Me sequel is finally going well. It's got to the point where I'm more excited to be writing that than to be going online and checking Delicious or my friends list; which is the best stage of a story. I wrote 4000 words today, which takes me to six and a half thousand. Which is probably more than halfway through? It depends how much I extend the last scene. Either way it's ridiculous, because nothing happens in this story, it's just Ryan angsting and being an idiot and drawing flowers on his cheeks and then they make up \o/

It's exciting to have it finally go well, though; for such a little thing, this fic has been kicking my butt the last few weeks. (Plus, Gerard and Mikey! First cameo by the Way brothers in one of my fics <3)

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The early Peanuts comic strips are fascinating. Did you know the first three characters introduced are actually Charlie Brown, Patty (the blonde Patty, not Peppermint), and a boy called Shermy? Snoopy (as the tiniest, cutest dog in the world) is in the second strip, and Violet comes along about four months in, and then we slowly get baby!Schroeder and the first time he touches a toy piano, and baby!Lucy with strange wide eyes. Lucy's introduction is also the cue for Violet to occasionally start wearing her hair in a pony tail, rather than the two plaits, I think because otherwise she and Lucy look too similar. I'd always wondered why she's the only character with variable appearance.

Wow, I am such a dork about this. Is this fascinating for anybody else? Because I'm fascinated.

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I am completely in love with the Empires album, as of ... like forty eight hours ago when I finally downloaded it, and pretty much haven't stopped listening to it since. I'm thinking of actually writing a track-by-track review. I'm not sure how valuable that would be, since I'm not hugely musically savvy, but guys, if bands want to put awesomely brilliant albums on the web for free legal download, I want to encourage them with hype.

This is a pretty sad little list.

1. The Other Hand by Chris Cleave

Literary fiction. Little Bee is getting out of the Immigration Detention Centre. She has perfect diction but very little idea of how to call a taxi. But she has a driver's license, picked up from a beach two years ago, with an English address on it. The beach is the worst memory she has, but she's going to go and find the address on the driver's license anyway. Sarah is dealing with her husband's suicide, and a four-year-old son who won't take off his Batman suit in case the baddies get more of them. She's never been able to forget what happened on that beach in Nigeria two years ago, but she never thought she'd see Little Bee again.

This is that book that sparked a vitriolic little rant against literary fiction from me last month. Mostly I hated it because I thought I was going to love it so much. The opening segment is from Little Bee's perspective, and it's all about how much she wishes that she was a British Pound Coin - welcome everywhere! crosses national boundaries in a single bound! - rather than an African girl. The next Little Bee segment is marvellous too - she has a great voice, quirky and tragic and funny and clever, with a dark thread under everything from the horror of the refugee experience. The Sarah segments sat really awkwardly with these, for me. Sarah is, you realise eventually, a fairly extraordinary person, but next to Little Bee she seems terribly ordinary, with depressingly ordinary problems - falling out of love with her husband, survivor's guilt, guilt over an affair. She feels very British and very adult and she's just telling such a completely different story to the one Little Bee's telling. For most of the book I thought that what I was going to say in this review was: If the entire story had been told from Little Bee's POV, this would be a seriously fantastic narrative.

( Spoilers and sadness )

I don't think I'm designed for literary fiction, and maybe literature fans would take something very different from this. For me, it was just a book that could have been wonderful and was awful instead.


2. Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie & Bob Mayer

Romance-thriller. Ish. Agnes maybe has an anger problem. She has a court-appointed psychiatrist, though, and she gets to channel the rage into her weekly food column, and she has a lovely fiance who would never cheat on her and who she'll therefore never have to knock unconscious with a frying pan. It's working, really. Then a kid with a gun turns up and tries to steal her dog, and a hitman turns up to protect her, and a whole lot of people who should have been on her side are apparently not, and ... well, it's going to be a hell of a week.

I don't have any vitriol about this one, but it's another hit-and-miss for me. I haven't read any of Crusie's other collaborations, but it felt to me as though the seams were more obvious than they should have been in this one. Agnes's parts felt mostly like a comedy or errors with slightly deadlier stakes than usual, but Shane's parts (he's the hitman) strayed into a chillier brand of cold-blooded-killer games. I couldn't drum up much enthusiasm for Shane at all, actually. He didn't even feel human at first, and he warmed up some by the end but he was still kind of a vacuum compared to the warm circle of crazy friends and enemies surrounding Agnes.

Also, the sex scenes were awful. The first one could have been funny if it wasn't also trying to be hot, but in general they were the scroll-past-with-eyes-averted kind of bad. Which is not a problem Crusie usually has, so I'm not sure what to think about it.

Still, I liked the way Agnes's character-arc came together, and I liked her best friend Lisa Livia a lot - more than most of Crusie's best friend characters. So that's worth something.