Well hello, boys.

I've been working on these characters Dom Toretto and Brian O'Conner from The Fast & The Furious franchise since, oh, about two weeks ago. Geez, has it been that long? If you know me and my fandoms well, you know that most of them I love to watch, love to read fanfic, but rarely enter into as an active contributor. I think that's primarily because there's already a lot of work done on that fandom, there's whole sites devoted to its fanfic writers with references and summaries and all the homework's practically been done for me. There's no interest to write because most of the things have already been done. That, or the characters are so straightforward that - while interesting - they don't prod me to study them.

There have been only two fandoms I get...for lack of a better description... 'that' feeling about. Both of them offered a wealth of openings for inference, opinion and study. They made the writing interesting. I feel rewarded when other people read my work in those fandoms and say 'yeah, that's totally right,' or better yet, 'Wow, I never thought of it that way!'

If you've been with me on some of my more singleminded and kind of scary romps through the Internet looking for clues (like our roadtrip through the auto databases of the web looking for a Cadillac with just the right tailfins to be Duke's car from the series, falsechaos), you know that I can go to some odd lengths for a fandom I'm hardcore committed to. I don't get that feeling too often - in fact, I've only had it twice.

Actually. Make that three times, now. I've been doing my homework, and I've got 'that' feeling again. The one that previously drove me to think, write, draw, live and breathe a character or set of characters.

( This is where it gets long, boring and obsessive, folks. )

Also, I've got a couple quick ficbits posted over at bardic_fic. I've hidden all the porn, but the genfic is still publicly accessible without friending the journal.

This afternoon I took a step back from absolutely everything and sat down with a movie that I've been lusting to see. I don't even know why I was lusting to see this movie. I had absolutely no recommendations - most of the people I mentioned it to gave me a blank look until I mentioned the father, son and holy ghost writer, director and producer: Quentin Tarantino.

And then they get that other blank look. That one that says they're flashing back on Lucy Liu decapitating people, or television previews of Rose McGowan literally shooting from the hip--midthigh, actually, or general gratutitous gore. In fact, I think if you examine the nearest Rogets Thesaurus, under synonyms for 'gratuitous gore,' you'll find 'Quentin Tarantino.'

And good god but we love him for that. It isn't the volume. It's the quality of that gratuitous gore. It's never enough to make you numb to it, just--

Whew, I'm getting a little hot. I'll save that for later. Anyway.

The thing is, after that telltale bloodlust blank stare, they shake their heads; "Death Proof" isn't familiar. Probably not.

This movie is just my brand of candy. And by candy, I mean candy laced with Jack Daniels.

( Let's tally up what we've got in this movie: )

All right. *clears throat*

So all of those ingredients wouldn't make this movie by themselves. You have to add Quentin Tarantino and whatever crazy ass people he gets to write with him. It's like six people sitting in a room with a blank piece of paper and cart blanche to do whatever the fuck they want with these nine characters. I can almost hear that conversation:

"Hey, what if this girl was a disc jockey? And what if she had awesome, I mean totally amazing, smoking legs. Like, Sydney Poitier legs."
"Why don't we just get Sydney Poitier?"
"Fuck yeah!"
"And we've got this intense focus on her legs, so why don't we do something horrific with that? Like, hang it out the window so you're all tense, going "she's gonna get that fucking ripped off. And then we DO IT. We fucking rip her LEG off!"
"Fuck yeah!"
"And then what if during the car chase, we ran them both up a random bank of dirt, Dukes of Hazzard style? And then ran Kurt Russell through a random fence!"
"Fuck yeah!"
"And what if we have the Death Proof Charger just fling some poor nameless slob on a motorcycle into a garage door?"
"..."
"...and the helmet would be red!"
"...FUCK YEAH!"

I was talking about that gore? He doesn't do gore just to shock you. That would imply that you had no connection to the characters he offs - and he does everything he can to get you attached to the character before he kills them. He does gore to snag you. Grab you by the throat and throw you into the movie. He does it to show you that he is not afraid of gore. That if somebody gets their head, their leg, their face chopped off, even if they're the hero of the movie, you are gonna fucking see it chopped off.

And then he stops. The gore absolutely stops. ...Or did it just stop for a while? When's the next time? He shows you how the pattern plays out, what happens when Stuntman Mike pinpoints a handful of 'girlfriends.' Then he shows you the pattern starting all over again. And he's so graceful about it. ...Wait, where did that one girl go? She went into the gas station. Why isn't she there somewhere? Did he take her? Are we about to see her ground into gravel? Who's that car behind them? It's not black... is it still Mike, just in another car?

This is the kind of suspense that has me curled up in my seat in delicious horror. The reason I loved the car chase wasn't because they were roughing up a pair of awesome cars. It was because Tarantino already made it obvious that if one of those girls got hurt, I'd see it in gruesome detail, after he made me love every single one of them for who they were. That man is the master of suspense.

I am in love with this movie. And the side effect of this movie that I did not, could not expect... it turned me on.

Flood update: Mom and my brother got up early this morning to help a friend of the family evacuate his farm. I'm still so exhausted that I didn't do more than stir when my brother came in and explained what was going on. I've been freaking out all morning and trying to distract myself, but just now I got a call from Mom -- everyone's all right, the family's all right, and on top of that, they rescued a ton of cats before the water comes in.

There is a mama cat with a litter of kittens in my brother's truck right now, and they're coming home.

I used the Dresden icon because. Burly brother rescues kittens? Uh huh.

Are you a Sahara fan?

Are you an Al/Dirk fan?

'Cause if you've never considered the pairing before, You NEED to read this fic.

WAH. *HAPPY*

So my brother has a new kitten. He adopted a mostly-bengal male from a guy he knows at work, about seven weeks old and tiny. He joins the current crew comprised of:

1 Golden Retriever
1 Yellow Longhair
1 Siamese
3 (and sometimes 4) people.
Assorted bugs.

He's a literal handful. Meaning he fits in my hand. Other than that, he's a very nice kitten. He missed his litter mates last night, I can only presume, and given that the other cats aren't so favorably disposed to him at the moment, we have to put him in the cat carrier for the time being at night. He was crying when I finally dragged my ass upstairs at around 2:30, 3:00, and because I needed it as much as he did, I was grateful when I opened up the carrier and he toddled right out into my arms to fall asleep.

So I put a kitten to bed last night. Eventually he was peaceful enough to put back in his carrier, and he didn't cry again.

It was nice. Didn't really help me feel better, like, at all. But it was nice, nonetheless.

And I wasted way too much time on the fanfic debates going around the Internet, but hell, it was informative and fun!

Scylla -- [noun]: A person with a sixth sense for detecting the presence of goblins 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

I suppose this beats 'Extremely Flatulent,' which was one of the initial ones I got. XD I'm like Frodo's Sting! Only not.

Heroes on the Half Shell VS The Power Rangers

Like Alien VS Predator. Only not.

You know...I was just amused by a thought after working on last night's log. What if... domino_effect was a television show, and our various 'scenes' were episodes? And we had millions of viewers (some part of a community fandom) watching our episodes and making inferences about the characters?

My main thought was subtext. I can just imagine viewers sitting on the couch watching the show and going "And the good Ship [insert pairing] saaaaails into port." And I wondered what kind of unintentional subtext we'd be presenting to viewers. XD Maybe we would WTF at a pairing, but is there 'evidence' in the RP to support it? Would there be 'crack' pairings? Would there be 'rival' pairings? *snickersnort* Random, yes. Off to work now.

Title: Innocent Victim
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! - the college years
Pairing: Chaseshipping (Tristan/Duke) ...ish. Breakup fic. Who knows? This might blossom into a full story, I've gotten flashes since I wrote it last night. ...I just hope Duke has that car insured.
Summary: It's the middle of the night, when passion and tempers run their hottest. It's not the first, but it will be the last time Duke will ever cheat on Tristan.
Notes: REMEMBER - I know I haven't written it in a while, but this is actual fanfiction divorced from domino_effect and Indecent Rhythm. Written because I was bored, segregated from the internet, Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats" wouldn't leave me alone, and a little part of me wanted to know why it wasn't vandalism but a glorious statement if a girl did it.

As it turns out? If a guy does it, it's scary and hot at the same time. At least to me.

WARNING: This fic does NOT contain WAFF. At all. Plenty of rage, profanity, and property damage, however.

*****

In the overhanging shadows of the alley, Tristan fingered the grip of his baseball bat. The long, curved Louisville Slugger was made of ash, fine-grained and solid and chewed up with scars.

A few more wouldn’t make much of a difference, either way.

Tristan’s shoulder and bicep rolled with the fine motion of rotating the naked end of the bat as it dangled down his hip. If anyone spotted him in that overwhelming darkness, they might believe his arm was as busy with thinking as his brain, for every emotion and decision worked down into the clench of his fist on the ash grip. Beyond Tristan, the city nightlife hummed noisy and bright, wet from a recent rain so the pavement shone with gasoline-rainbows of reflected color. Music, smoke and clammy hot air exhaled from the exhaust vents overhead.

Tristan continued to wait in the shadows, noticing none of it. His eyes were narrowed, body wary and loose, propped up against warm summer brick just inside the shielding angles of shadows.

[ Follow the Fake Cut, I Tell You! ]