Evil Wrapped in a Fangirl Disguise

As of today, August 15, I have had this LJ for eight years.

Whoa.

It's amazing how much easier writing becomes when you don't feel like crap.

I am having a not so happy day.

So, how about 5 THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY RIGHT NOW.

01. Adam Rex's The True Meaning of Smekday, which I already recced over here.

Here is a moment from when Gratuity, the protagonist, first meets J.Lo:

"Then...then...I will have onto shoot with my gun!"

I jumped back, palms up. In all the excitement, I hadn't thought of that. My eyes darted to where his hips would be, if he had any. I frowned.

"You don't even have a gun!"

"Yes! YES!" he shouted, nodding furiously, as though I'd somehow proven his point. "NO GUN! So I will have to...have to..."

His whole body trembled.

"...SHOOT FORTH THE LASERS FROM MY EYEBALLS!"

I fell into a row of shelves. That one was new to me.

"Shoot forth the lasers?"

"SHOOT FORTH THE LASERS!"

"You can do that?"

The Boov hesitated. His eyes quivered. After a few seconds he replied, "Yes."

I squinted. "Well, if you shoot your eye lasers, then I'll have no choice but to...EXPLODE YOUR HEAD!"

"You humans can not to ex--"

"We can! We can too! We just don't much. It's considered rude."

The Boov thought about this for a moment.

"Then...we are needing a...truce. You are not to exploding heads, and I will to not do my DEVASTATING EYE LASERS."

"Okay," I agreed. "Truce."

- p. 22-23

02. Misha Fucking Collins:


Click. It gets bigger. ;)

( This picture still does things to me: )

( Oh, and how about that one really distracting gif, too: )

03. DiNozzo/McGee, and NCIS' recent episode "Guilty Pleasures", which, I swear to God, had to have been the showrunners saying, "Here, Michael Weatherly, run with your 'DiNozzo and McGee are in lurve' idea."



OMG. That first scene? I almost literally flailed myself off the bed. Guys, just sleep together already. You'll be happier after, I promise.

I LOVE THEM SO MUCH I CAN'T STAND IT.

04. My ringtone, since I got my iPhone last summer, is the beginning of the Bad Horse Chorus from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog. (Up until "...it's high-ho Silver! Signed Bad Horse...")

05. trademybike sent me CDs of the band Elbow. I've only listened to one so far, but I really like them. I love it when people send me tunes.

So I finished typing this and then I was hesitating over the "post" button and I realized it was because I'm afraid the Castiel I try to write, while feeling in-character to me, may read as OOC to other people. You don't want to be like "This is how I see things" and then have someone call you on the fact that it doesn't translate.

But oh well.

If this post is extra nuts and doesn't flow well, it's because I'm hungry and dinner is waiting and I'm too impatient to re-read it now. :P


Yesterday aesc posted The Casifesto; or, Why Castiel is not your grandma's angel. It is a post of brilliance and, in my opinion, should be required fandom reading. Also, there are pretty pictures.

I read it yesterday, and a little while ago lattimore happened to point it out to me again.

And then an amazing thing happened: I realized what made me stop reading SPN fic like I was starving and it was cake.

( Going under a cut because, well, it got long and maybe non-sensical )

01. Since I am working on the follow-up to But Soon Again, I thought it might be appropriate to give that series (haha I have a series!) a tag of its own. So Busted through But Soon Again can now all be found under: apocalypse what apocalypse.

02. The copy of The Shining that I'm reading is my mom's. I just realized she would have been reading it at roughly the same age I am now, give or take a year. I think that's neat!

03. I am sick. On the one hand, UGH. On the other hand, it got me out of working in Mattawa today. You lose some, you win some?

04. Getting my hair cut next week. Don't know if after I should dye it more red or more dark. Last time I went more red, so maybe it's time to go the opposite way...

05. I like fives. In those moments of slightly more OCD-ness, five is my go-to number. Like when I lock up the library and have to check the door. I count to five as I make sure the knob doesn't turn. Several times. I wonder if I count to five five times? I can never just do it once.

The other day I was looking for title-inspiration for "whatever we lose" and my eyes happened to fall on my copy of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, which I read a couple of years ago in Modernism in Art and Literature. It contains a quote that spoke to me so clearly at the time I was amazed:

She could see it so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself--struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: "But this is what I see; this is what I see," and so to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her.
- p. 22-23

I get a lot of things out of that passage, and I understand it through my own various experiences involving fear of creative failure, that horrible moment between having an idea and pulling out a blank page to make that idea something more than just a thought, an image in your head. Fear of creative rejection, dismissal.

To borrow a quote from one of my other favorite things, The History Boys, that moment in reading for me was one of these:

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something--a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things--which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours."

I think I've gained a lot more confidence since then. I'm not afraid to start things much anymore for fear they won't live up to the vision in my head. Though I'm sure ginnith would have interesting things to say on my various writing related neuroses and how the have/haven't changed. She's been there through it all, the lucky lady.

Speaking of writing, back to editing I go.

Yesterday my back was absolutely killing me. So I took pain killers and applied heat and texted sdrohc_ratiug. She brought over her massage table and now I can BEND OMG.

A couple of weeks with no newspaper articles to write was really nice, but now I'm having the hardest time getting back into the groove. Bah.

Monday there's a port meeting. Wednesday is fire district. I think I spend the majority of my time writing something-or-other.

Exclamation mark!



This was the sunset last Wednesday at the library. It's also essentially my view the whole day when I sub at my favorite library. That is the MAIN STREET, folks. Woo small town life. Or something.

Meanwhile, it's snowing outside so I went out and messed with my camera in the dark in the snow. I can finally feel my fingers again.

These all look so much better on my camera screen, but I'm going to post them anyway. And maybe play with them on the other computer some other time.

( Under the cut you will find: a few attempts to take pictures of snow in the dark and a picture of ME (exciting, I know) )

So the bad thing about snow (one of them, anyway) is that people track it in in the stupid treads of their stupid boots. Then some poor, unsuspecting person (ME) goes about in their stocking feet and BAM! Warm, fluffy, comfy socks become receptacles for ice-cold water. :(

It doesn't help that our floors are white where they're not carpeted. So you either don't see the snow or you don't see the puddle until you're hopping on one foot across the room because, Jiminy Christmas*, that's really fucking cold.

I'm going to have to mount an expedition under my bed for my slippers.


*One of the people I talked to for my feature yesterday said variations of this the whole time. He also said something else that was delightfully odd and character-like, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it was.

Tonight on the CW they replayed "Free to Be You and Me." Much as I love the episode - and, oh, I do, I really do - I also have some issues with it. But that's one of the things fic is for, right? To work through those. Which I have already done.

But the episode is now on my mind and so, a post. I'm mostly just thinking out-loud under the cut. It'll probably be a jumble and lead nowhere.

( Spoilers for the episode, obviously. )

Anyway. I've got fic to work on. Two things that I was supposed to be working on until Busted hi-jacked my brain. And, um, now I may also be working on a sequel/follow-up to Busted. Apparently when I say, "Take a break from NC-17," my brain goes, "NO DIRTY FIC, WRITE THE DIRTY FIC." ::shrug::

Unrelated, sdrohc_ratiug did some of her massage therapist magic on me today and OH MY GOD. I...don't even...She only worked on me a short time and it was impromptu, but my back feels so much better. I think I'd forgotten what it was like not to be in constant pain in certain places. I am now considering doing the massage thing regularly again.

Dahlia, hun, you are awesome. In general, not just or the massage. ♥