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.

I can't help it. I can't help it. I've been plugging away like hell at this all night, and I'm so excited I want to scream like a little kid at Christmas.

We're almost done. We're almost done, OMG. We're ALMOST THERE. WE'RE GOING TO LAUNCH THE NEW VALE SOON.

And while I'm working on an article about the new logo (which also? OMG SQUEE AWESOME LOGO), I'm listening to "Seasons of Love," and I'm almost in tears. I love all of my roleplay places so hard, and I grew up at the Vale. I'm a different person than I was when I started there because I started there, I've met people who will (hopefully) be at my side for many, many years if not the rest of my life, I've gained experience and wisdom and most of all, responsibility. I made terrible mistakes there, I learned and grew from them, and I'm a better person because of them. I'm so fiercely proud of this place. Even when I wandered away from it, even when it caused me terrible pain and frustration, it was still my home base and touchstone at the back of my mind AND, I've discovered, was full of wonderful people I'd met but didn't know that well until this past year. I strayed, they gave me a second chance, and I'm so grateful that I was here for this huge forward step in the Vale's history.

I'm so excited, and so heart-full right now I can't imagine going to sleep. It feels like Christmas Eve. Look at what we did in a year, guys! Just LOOK! Mia woke up the Vale site at DeviantArt and between us we breathed new life into that place. Between all of us, we got the FT Discussion Thread going again, we got people interested in the books, we hashed out the War Plot (OMG), finished our logo, remade the Member Pages, got great new members, made awesome new changes to the MSN Groups site, we found out that we all make a pretty good team.

And me? I got to be a part of the team again. You let me be a part of the team again. I got to take the skills I've learned both from college and from work and help get the word out; make us classy, make us organized. You not only let me help, you trusted me almost wholesale. You have no idea how much that meant.

You guys, WE ROCK. I wish I could hug each and every one of you! If I ever get down about the place, just link me back to this entry. So filled with elation that I'm drunk with it. Whenever I've had a spare minute I've been busting my butt on this place for the last two months, and I'm ragged, and I'm so glad I got the chance to be this overworked and stretched thin.

FOR THIS MOMENT. HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS WE DID IT.

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.

Mamma Mia! Needs to become a cult classic, a la Rocky Horror. If you've seen it, here's me hoping you get what I'm on about. Why do we only have ONE Rocky Horror phenomenon? Why is that our only option?

I will work with all interested individuals in a grassroots campaign to make that adorably ridiculous and inexplicably awesome movie a legend in the halls of urban myth and young adult rites of passage. Let's break out our parents' silver lamé and our feather boas and pay homage to ABBA and all of the middle-age actors who made this movie so abso-friggin-lutely wonderful.

It's a damn shame that movies are such a luxury that we can't go see it fifty times. BUT I WANT TO. OHMYGAWD.

I wish Blooness read this journal. We could recast that movie with Bibble playing Meryl Streep's role. I get so many grins from Bibble's innocent and joyful licentiousness. XD

Title: Fish For the Devil
Rating: PG for language and some mildly sexual content (no kissyface, promise!)
Fandom: domino_effect
Summary: Trapped in the lobby of a clothing store with Em and Scylla making no promises of shopping any faster, Joey and Tristan find a way to amuse themselves via Emily's tarot deck. If you can't guess how by the title, I'm not gonna tell you.
A/N: Holy hell. I haven't posted anything in ages and then I throw you half-coherent and mostly irreverent dreck?
___________

"Do you have any cups?" Tristan glanced up at Joey over his current fan of twelve cards. They should have known better than to play "Go Fish" with only two people, and he had the miserable card count to prove it. They played out of boredom, trapped in the lobby of the clothing store while their companions were off doing something arcanely feminine.

( 15 Minutes Previously... )

Title: Five Things That Never Happened During the Firebringer Trilogy
Author: bardicsidhe
Rating: PG
Warnings: Contains (non-graphic) character death.
Summary: Written for that darn Five Things challenge that I can't for the life of me find a link to the rules of. If someone knows, help me out? I wore myself out googling for it.
Note: If you feel like contributing, the gauntlet has been thrown down here. If you want to write but can't post there and don't want to join the Group, just let me know where it's posted, and I'll post a link on the challenge board once you're finished so that the group can find your story and enjoy it too. :3

*****

For the whole of the homeward journey, Tek's forehead ached with the firebowl's burn. Yet it was no match for the slowly smoldering ache within her heart. She wondered if it always would. She hoped so. Like the stories of the lightning storm three hundred years before that swallowed a quarter of the mountain firs, Tek imagined her soul would lay like dead dark ash and smoking coals even beneath a soaking rain.

She had survived the wyvern queen's sting only with her mother's late help. The wyvern queen, killed at the cost of Jan's life.

( Read more... )

It's been a long time since I avidly just... rifled through the boards at the Vale. Granted, I was attempting to glean enough information to bolster the ongoing search for an unexpectedly absent and much-missed Vale member: Boz. Or Epsilon, or Caffey. Her sudden disappearance at the Vale and the abandonment of several other places she frequented is saddening and worrisome. Though I never knew her well, I wanted to, and... well... hope springs eternal, I suppose. I was trawling the boards at first just for their own sake, and then I found a few things she'd posted, and revisited the piece I wrote for Boz, Neo, Reto, and Kybra, and spent much more time than I should have searching for her.

Boz, I miss you. My voice is small compared to the Internet and the world outside of it, but even if you never return to the Vale, I'd like to at least know that you're well.

( Read more... )

I am proud to announce that there is nothing in my refrigerator that isn't edible.

Except for maybe the plastic containers of a few things and the box of baking soda.

I cleaned out my fridge. I don't know why I was keeping that bowl of bean soup... for posterity? I mean, it was not only fuzzy, it was white. I don't know why it was that I couldn't make myself throw it out. I hate wasting food, maybe that was it, but really... keeping it in the fridge was not going to make it turn into a delicious chocolate bar. It was just going to get fuzzier.

So I ransacked the fridge and emptied it of all inedible contents. There were a few Mystery Containers and one can of straw mushrooms that - after first taste, I couldn't bring myself to use in anything else ever again omg yeeeeech, but it was all for the better.

Now if I could just make myself remove those orange rolls from the premises. Hah, who am I kidding. I should just have them bronzed and mount them.

Also, I rock crunchy ramen cabbage salad. I so rock it. I rock it hard.

Also, I taught myself how to waterwalk in The Endless Forest. And how to walk slowly, AKA strut. And you have no idea how amused I am at the new costumes for the mardi gras celebration. There was a PEACOCK DEER OMG. Somebody has been STEALING SOMEONE ELSE'S IDEAS. How DARE they?! I mean, look at it! It's blue! And there's feathers! And it's... it's... peacock-y!

I peeked in the game's forums and was not surprised to find that the oldsters (circa early 2007) Are Not Happy with all the rude n00bs. Holding out for the first wank report, and then the swarm of secrets at f_s. It's like watching the Evolution of Dance.

In unrelated news, I have the Cold That Ate Tokyo.

"Scylla!"

"Brian! You're not dead!"

"Land of the living. Takes more than the flu to kill me."

Over the seven months of Scylla's employment at the resort, Brian got to know her about as well as possible, given the circumstances.

"Ninjas?"

"Absolutely. Sneaky devils."

( Read more... )

Can't help but show off.

valehealer

Scylla has a journal. This is fun! It's helping me learn more about the character, and she? Is having a ball getting to talk all she wants. She may be my oldest girl, but she also has had the least amount of character development, so I'm still learning about her even after all this time.

She appears to be gently amused at just about everything. And is apparently quite a bit more talkative than me, which is... heh. Surprising, yes.

And look! I finally painted a picture of her! :D And look! She has no outlines! That girl is outline free!

Regs, Rohar, want icon art? I'll make you some!

Bit much to cover tonight, but I'll do my best. It's been one heck of a day.

I brought Simon home with me to visit the folks, anticipating staying throughout the following week and not wanting to leave him by himself on Christmas. He is, after all, my guardian and my small and stalwart companion, and it seemed unfair to leave him alone, as he so dislikes said state of being. I brought home all of Simon's accoutrement as well - commode, bowls, food, brush, etc. - and set up my room as a sort of safe haven. Simon has been an 'only cat' since parting ways with his littermates three years ago, and I was concerned for both my own cat and the three other cats living with my family. Predictably, when I arrived the swarm of furry residents converged on my room and proceeded to inspect the newcomer in his carrier and his luggage like a trio of four-legged circling sharks.

Cosmo - the regal yellow patriarch of the feline contingent - presided with disinterest, although made it clear that Simon was to stay out of his way. Jojo - the Siamese female - continues to declare with spitting and hissing that she isn't having any of it. And Rav - the Bengal tom, who is the only male in the house with testicles intact (with the possible exception of my brother) - coaxed Simon into becoming his playmate after only a few days of anxious staring. Now they regularly chase each other around the house. Simon's a member of the family, as much as if he were my son, my brother or an 'adopted' friend.

I watched Ghost Rider. I watched The Bourne Ultimatum. I watched The Da Vinci Code, all for the first time.

( Read more... )

Well, heh, the apocalypse hits tonight at midnight. If you don't hear from me after tonight, either pack up blowdryers and electric blankets and head for the middle of the country, or think of me fondly, and not as the block of ice I've inevitably become.

Actually, I'll be just fine. Neither my heat nor my stove are electric, so should the inch of ice they're forecasting actually hit, and knocks out the power, I'll have heat. I went out tonight to pick up a few necessary things, and was just weirded out by the amount of people with the same idea. I wasn't surprised, just creepy crawly. I like people, don't get me wrong, but there had to be several hundred people in there, and part of me was just going get it off me, get it off me. That was just Wal-Mart. When I got to the grocery store, and saw the loaded parking lot, I decided that I had enough food to last me for however long it's going to take my area to thaw.

Ugh, I'm gonna have to get home before Thursday and get the inflatable mattresses. I had so much shit to schlepp this weekend, what with all the ornaments and decorations that I completely missed those. I hate being an adult. Now, instead of looking at a winter ice storm and going "OMG YES NO SCHOOL" I look at the forecast and go "PLZ GO AWAY KTHX."

Note: big difference between ice- and snow-storm. Me? I can apparently drive in a snowstorm. Mickey and me, we've got it down. I need sandbags for the back end though. He was doing some serious fishtailing off the stoplights. Or maybe snowtires. Snowtires for a Yaris ftw. XD

My Christmas tree has been assembled and decorated. It took me for-freaking-ever to decide what ornament to put on first. Because that, for me, is A Big Deal, and I'm not home with my folks, so the decision was not already made. My tree is mostly composed of carousel horses, rocking horses, more carousel horses, a few reindeer, a green m&m, and did I mention the carousel horses? Every year, my mom always bought my brother and I a special ornament apiece, since we were very small. We also received ornaments from friends and family, or made them ourselves, and as the collections grew, we needed our own boxes to put them in. This year, for the first time, I got a chance to put it into action, to see just how much was there. I bought a box of balls (unbreakable plastic) just in case I needed to fill in the holes. But I don't need them. They're still in their box. This year I can step back and look at MY tree, MY ornaments, my memories and my life on every branch, and I owe it to my mother's ingenuity and forethought.

Simon, of course, is doing his best to un-decorate it when I'm not looking. I'm still amused by how he managed to physically remove one of the lowest branches and laid it on the tree skirt for me to find when I came home.

If I'm stranded at home tomorrow, I think I may make bread again. I have enough components for two more loaves. Not that my kitchen needs heating, but that'll definitely help out.

Oh, and don't forget about the Birth of the Firebringer Read-A-Long! :D *plugplugshamelessplug*

I have a strange desire to find some way to celebrate Winter Solstice this year. It seems important.

Thank you for this Jim Brickman album, Sorcha. It is breathtaking.

So this one's been bugging me long enough that - since I had the time tonight to do something for myself, I learned how to vid this afternoon through a variety of helpful sources, wrestled with the technology for a few hours, then popped this out.

Well...maybe not 'popped.' I'd say that roughly 10-12 hours went into this thing. But it's out of my head now. There's only one part I'm not so happy with, and I just did not have the technology and know-how to smooth the song transition when I cropped it. Bah.

MegaUpload Link: [ Here ]

Filesize: 12.7MB
File Type: WMV (plays on VLC and Windows Media Player, that I've tried)
Made With: Windows Movie Maker and Virtual Dub. Music edited in Audacity. Audacity and Virtual Dub are freeware available on the web.
Song: "Still the One" by Orleans
Fandom: Sahara (the movie)
Pairings/Characters: Al Giordino/Dirk Pitt

Enjoy! Early birthday present for Em, maybe? Heh. Maybe.

I believe... though I cannot be certain... that there is some Unusual Creature living within this building. I do not know whether its residence has always been here, or if it moved in at the beginning of our stay or briefly after we completed our move... but it is most certainly here now.

I suppose, if I were to look quite hard, I could assemble a great deal of diverse evidence pointing to an organism of arcane nature. At the moment, however, the most predominant clue which I have witnessed on numerous occasions is its peculiar habit of feeding. It is extremely shy, therefore I only discover the traces of its latest hunt rather than come upon the creature itself - but I believe one can assume several things, judging from said evidence.

1. It is not a predator, but a scavenger.
2. It has a rather large set of sharp teeth, or some other physiological cutting instrument useful for making very clean incisions. Perhaps it has mastered rudimentary tools? One could suppose the latter is more likely, as I have yet to see a jawline appear with no curvature in nature. Either that or it is stupendously large, which I doubt given the enclosed location in which it feeds.
...In consideration, I am certain it is the latter. It is also quite deft at opening boxes.
3. It is a donutvore of the raised variety.
4. It has a very low metabolism, or else is very small.

Once a week, on Tuesdays actually, the morning meeting's leftover donuts are placed on the table in an empty conference room, there to be picked over by the other scavengers subsisting on donuts as well, among other things (such as Cherry Coke and chocolate cake).

By the end of the day, always, all donuts are gone with the exception of the jelly-filled raised donut.

Half of this donut is always gone.

In a related story to the one cited below, General Peter Pace (the American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) says he regretted the remarks he made.

Note, however, very clearly, that he did not apologize. Not that it would make any difference at this point.

Pace's words:

"I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not believe that the armed forces of the United States are well served by saying through our policies that it's OK to be immoral in any way."

He goes on to say:

"As an individual, I would not want (acceptance of gay behavior) to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior,"

If General Pace would get his head out of his ass long enough to check it out, adultery is a punishable crime only in state legislation in the U.S. And most (smart) state courts won't touch it. After even a cursory search, I discovered that the Supreme Court especially won't touch it except under certain extreme situations, due to an earlier court case in the 60's that protects the right to privacy of consenting adults. It's certainly grounds for divorce, but while many states do list it on the books as a criminal offense, it appears that very few states actually enforce it.

The American justice system isn't as deeply rooted in biblical morals as Pace believes.

I have received three more patches for the denim jacket I've been outfitting since last year. These three are from Lin (tragic_elegance), and I'll have photography of the patches shortly. I need to go pick up some thread and a needle to sew these on, since I have an iron now, but I really don't trust the glue on most transferrable patches.

So. What did I receive from Lin?

+ One random "Anime Pavilion" patch.
+ A pretty awesome "Mobile Suit Gundam" patch.
+ And the best one EVAR (in Lin's words, XD): a Mounted Deputy Sheriff patch.

So sayeth Lin:

"I got it from my grandpa who got it from who knows where. XD"

I have a *mounted police* shoulder patch. What's more, I've been told that given this town has no mounted police, it's legal for me to wear it. WOO!

I also have a few more patches to put on:

+ One "I Did the Corn Maze" patch from Sorcha (sorchafyre) with a really amusing story attached. *G*
+ One red chinese dragon patch, purchased on sale.
+ One "I do things my way patch," purchased on sale.

This thing is really coming along! I guess the next thing I need is a thimble. This is some tough denim, and I killed my fingers sewing Shadow's (tranquil_ashes) Route 66 patch onto the shoulder. I know how to hand-sew, but I wasn't prepared for the amount of effort it'd take to push even a heavy-duty 'sharp' through this shit. Fingers = oww.

I am told that I have a talent... nay... a gift, some might say. That though this creature, this Dark Beast is abysmal at all else... so abysmal as that one might wonder why God (if there be a Greater Power) thought to even curse the Earth with her presence... that this horrid gargoyle has been blessed with a... Voice. That I, in my utter failure and ignominous existence, might somehow atone for my worthlessness by bringing some joy to others. That I might offer light and beauty and laughter to shield the eyes of such Men and Angels, truly, from the ugliness and black despair that is my... no, the void where one might possess a soul, that I have not. That thing that would be my soul is halved, claimed, branded, owned by they who I would possess my kisses and my caress.

And so I step before you now, onto this Stage, humbling myself and offering my tender, bruised and treacher'd body for you to rend; you, my friends, offering myself to your ridicule and humiliation for the CHANCE that some infinitesimal talent within my wretched existence... might bring you a shred of joy, of beauty, of love, and distract you from all that is dark and dangerous and cruel in this world around you. I will use this talent, this strange and precious treasure that for some reason I do not understand has been laid within my hands, and I will lift my voice, and read to you, read the maundering ravings, the passionate cries, I will expend my energy and my voice to its outer stretches, I will let you suck up every drop of that wit and charm which (in along with my Voice) are all that is beautiful within me. For some... reason... that I have yet to discover, even horrible, mouse that I am, have obtained a cellular phone...and though it is a strange new piece of an even stranger, desolate new world to this old Creature, I have learned to stroke the keys in such a way that I may be allowed some modicum of contact and comfort with those dearest to my heart's lifeblood. Lo, I will read to you, I will SING to you, I will tell you of joy and suffering, bright colors and sunshine and darkest of shadows, and pray to ABOVE that you find that... what small measure... of joy; of hope... I can offer you.

((I do dramatic readings for free over the phone. Ask and ye shall receive.))