There is a Remus/Sirius love and nostalgia fest going on in the comments of this post, and I've been reading some and thinking a lot.

( Ruminating, adjusting my thinky hat, has nothing to do with recent wanks, just a little bit of nostalgia on my part. )

I posted Calle's (the nephew) Easter card earlier and I'm fiercely proud of him right now -- he's not even 5 years old and he can spell his own name, that's pretty cool, I think. I learned to read and write when I was 5-ish, and I'm very pleased that Calle seems to have an interest for it. Neither of my cousins did -- my youngest cousin still reads and writes pretty poorly, and she's 9 -- so it's reassuring that he's interested in it.

But I started thinking about it, and man, it's gotta be really fucking weird to learn to read. I don't know if what I'm remembering is the actual sequence of events -- I remember sitting on Dad's lap with a Pippi Longstocking book as he sounded out the words for me, and me getting incredibly frustrated and angry because all I saw was black scratches on a yellowed page, smelling that way old books smell, and I knew that there was a secret to it, a secret inside the book, because my sister and my mother used to read what I saw as virtual tomes and I wanted to know what was so special with it. I mean, I've loved stories since I was a kid, I've made up stories since before I can remember, so to have stories told to you without having to whine Mom and Dad into reading them for you was incredibly tempting. I got angry, I gave up, all the damn time, only to five minutes later come back and do it all again with a stone-faced expression and a glare that DARED Dad to say anything. Stubborn as anything, but of course. I'm my parents' child.

In my memory, it's spring, but I may be wrong. In my memory, the kitchen table is still standing in the middle of the kitchen, the way it used to before Mom decided she needed more room and bought a kitchen island. In my memory, Mom is sitting at the kitchen table, chin in her hand, watching us, Dad is sounding stuff out, I'm on his lap, holding the book, frowning and trying my damndest. In my memory, the page is nothing but a mass of sticks and halfmoons, until it isn't anymore.

I don't know if that was the way it really happened. Probably not. But the way I remember it was that it went from confusion to clarity in an instant. One second the letters made no sense, the next... "Hennes hår hade samma färg som en morot och var flätat i två hårda flätor som stod rätt ut. Hennes näsa hade samma fason som en mycket liten potatis, och den var alldeles prickig av fräknar. Under näsan satt en verkligen mycket bred mun med friska, vita tänder..."

Hey, Pippi Longstocking. She made sense.

I remember shouting, "Mom! I can READ!" and Mom laughing and Dad sighing in relief. And from there on out there was just no going back. By the time I was 11 or so I had -- and believe me, I counted, several times -- read 700+ books, counting the children's books with pictures. And then I didn't even BEGIN to count all the books I had ever borrowed from the library.

It took me another three years to puzzle out the mystery of that magical device, the clock, and that was only months after I had learned how to swim. I was 9 before I learned how to ride a bike. Everything else was kind of blah and whatever. But reading? That's possibly the only thing I've EVER been stubborn about learning, ever. It's the only thing I've been wanting to know how to do NOW, right fast and pronto.

So yeah. And here we are.

"[Catholic] Believers are supposed to hold that the pope is the vicar of Christ on earth, and the keeper of the keys of Saint Peter. They are of course free to believe this, and to believe that god decides when to end the tenure of one pope or (more importantly) to inaugurate the tenure of another. This would involve believing in the death of an anti-Nazi pope, and the accession of a pro-Nazi one, as a matter of divine will, a few months before Hitler's invasion of Poland and the opening of the Second World War."

Am I the only one who kind of wants to write an alternate history now where the entire Catholic church turned Nazi and, like, went on another crusade or something along the lines?

Also!



The best of both worlds I feel. Seriously, read the first three chapters here.

So I just read an entry cleolinda just posted. She is, if you're unaware, kind of a multifandom profile -- she posts linkspams on all sorts of media related topics, writes reviews and parodies on movies, and has written the single best recaps of the Twilight books I have ever read. But, back to this entry, allow me to quote back at you.

forget whether I can sell the books themselves, can I write something that will make dozens if not hundreds of respected professionals--producers, directors, actors, production designers, costume designers, composers, special effects supervisors, publicity departments, even toy manufacturers--sit around and gush ever so earnestly about how they just wanted to honor my vision and the spirit of my book and my beloved characters and my fabulous wonderful creative visionary blah blah blah blah blah. Can I inspire people to those lengths? And I sit there in a cold sweat and go, "I can't, I can't do that, I can't sit here in front of a blank document and birth this instant cultural phenomenon, I can't write books that people will line up at midnight in the cold for, I can't write original characters that people will get into violent shipping wars over, I can't write something that will make 6000 people pile up at conventions and scream their faces off, I can't live up to that, I can't do it, oh God, oh God, oh God, I think I'm going to throw up now."

( Allow me to ramble about this for a short while. )

So I was talking to Steph about sex and how completely focused the entire fucking world is on it and romantic relationships. So of course, as it always does, it got me thinking.

( Cut for discussions of societal expectations of sex and asexuality (AKA kind of cranky TMI hour with Linn). )

So here's the thing. Considering my condition, I should not be reading postmodernist work. I shouldn't be reading horror stories. I shouldn't be reading books that play on my emotions like a fiddle, scraping them raw and leave me feeling vaguely paranoid and weirded out. I shouldn't, because considering my depression, if I was depressed and anxious and panicky before, these things should make me even more so.

So, I shouldn't want to read Palahniuk right now, right? The mindfuckery and twists of those books should leave me feeling so paranoid and weirded out and anxious that I should be wanting to check out any minute, to be completely fucking frank.

It's not just Palahniuk, of course it isn't. Postmodern lit in general is pretty fucking depressing, because a nihilistic world view is kind of a staple for the genre. Nothing gets better. There are no happy endings. Ever. We're inevitably heading for death and pain and suffering, and life isn't pretty, so literature shouldn't sugarcoat.

"Everybody wanting the same mass-marketed crap. Saying it's for their kid, but really it's not. All these fat, middle-aged dumbshits just want something to kill time. Nothing dark and edgy or challenging. Nothing artsy.

Just so long as it's got a happy ending."

The opposite of that kind of stuff, you know what I mean? Oh, I'm generalizing, of course I am, genres are never that simple, but generally speaking, you pick up these kinds of books -- one of the ~artistic~ ones -- you'll always leave feeling creeped out of your skull. "[T]he discomfort and the feeling at the end like someone reached into your skull and grabbed a chunk of your cerebral cortex in their fist, that's probably how you know it's literature".

Of course, every time I finish one of these things, I should, rightfully, be ready to hide under the covers and moan about the futility of life and the black pit of despair that is my soul etc. etc. for a week before I'd shake the funk off and repeat the process because I'm a masochist and a moron. And yet, and yet.

That never happens is the point I'm trying to make. Doesn't matter how awful the subject matter of how much it makes me feel like my brain is curling up in a corner to whimper pathetically, I've never thus far where I've reached the point where I go, "OH GOD WHAT IS THE POINT?" and hide, shivering for a month. On the contrary, at the end I usually end up more, "huh" than despairing, and creeped out though I may be, I always reach for the next one.

I suppose this is what people who love roller coasters feel like. Slow build, adrenaline pumping, and then the plummet, again and again. And to think I never liked roller coasters at all.

By the end, it's almost like. I don't know. A new resolve, perhaps? A creative boost? Something that makes you think, that makes you feel, that makes you appreciate on another level. I can't read a book without adapting something from it -- the mood, the speech patterns, whatever, I even Tyler Durden'd at Bee before, that was fun. There's always something I take with me. By the end of Fight Club I looked up, took a deep breath and felt like I wanted to give the entire world the finger.

Also, it's pretty sad when you realize that Ryan Ross' brain suddenly makes PERFECT sense. Maybe this is why the idiot can never surprise me that much, outside of his really rather macabre sartorial choices.

So, I'm catching up with a lot of sci fi fandom meta that's been blowing all around the house the last month in the wake of RaceFail and the pissiness between the old school book fans and the media fans. I don't really have a lot to add to that discussion, except for two things:

( Thinky thoughts. A little about pseudonymity, but mostly about race and underrepresentation of various minorities in sci-fi. And didn't I sound fantastically pretentious saying that, just now? )

Know this going in, people, this is going to be another not necessarily sad but weary post about how most things suck. Forewarned is forearmed.

Well, at least I THINK it's going to be weary, because that's the way I feel right now, but as with most things my brain doesn't always follow my body's directory. I had therapy today for the first time since before Christmas and it felt good. We talked a lot about my structure and organization issues, and the fact that I'm about as restless as they come, which of course made me think.

( I refuse to be less than what I am in this regard. I already doubt myself in all other areas, I refuse to think I'm dumber than what I am. )

Happy New Year, kids. It's been '09 out here for an hour and a half at this point, and I'm wearing a red tank top that looks so good on me I'm considering hitting on myself.

So, originally, I was just going to post something little, but I think now that I'm here, I might as well talk a little about the year past. '08 was... great in some ways. I met a lot of you, I got better friends with a whole bunch, and I don't know what I would do without you all. New albums -- Pretty. Odd., The Black Parade is Dead!, Howl, and Folie A Deux most notably -- and bandom turning into one long Christmas starting in November with the MCR blog and Twitter and the Panic things and everything.

It probably says something that all the good things this year were directly or indirectly related to my fandom. Someone told me once, on a love meme, that I was in love with fandom and my whole flist and I am, I really am.

But aside from that, '08 has been an awful fucking year for me. My life is in smoking ruins at this point, because when I noticed that the ship was going down, it was too late to do anything but to try to minimize the impact. I've been suicidally depressed for the first time in years, and even though I've seen a therapist, he can only do so much. I've bombed pretty much every responsibility I have, I'm poor as a church mouse and I live off my parents. I don't grow, I don't create, I can't take care of myself, and sometimes I can't breathe because getting out of it seems like more than I can handle. Of course, this isn't new, but it's something I've discovered this year. This has been the longest year ever, and yet here I am.

I'm still alive. I suppose that counts for something. I'm still physically unblemished, and my soul may be tarnished and I may have hit rock bottom but I'm clawing my way back up. I'll use my teeth if I have to, but I am getting out of this.

I'm being careful with resolutions this year, but I have a few. The first one is keep seeing my therapist, because I need him if I ever want to breathe again. The second is to just relax and try to figure out what I want, not try to please everybody else. The third is learn to take care of myself, or at least start to.

The fourth is maybe the most important of all: to create. I want to write, that's the only thing I know I want to do, the only thing about my future that makes sense. I signed up for getyourwordsout and I'm going to try my hand at 300k during 2009. I'm not sure how that's going to work out, but it's the only thing I can do. My therapist suggested it to me, last time, and it shocked me into stillness. "If writing is what you want to do, write," he said. "Take a job, something that doesn't require homework or assignments, something that will leave you time for writing. Finish something, anything."

I'm going to do that. And it scares the crap out of me, but I'm going to do it. I have to.

So, in essence, I'm going to make more use of my writing filter than I have this month. I'm also... I hope I'll get better at commenting too, I mean. I feel like a useless friend and a selfish douche, because I can't give you guys the attention you deserve. I apologize for that, and I can only say that I try. I always read everything though. So.

Goodbye, 2008. You sucked balls, and I hope you die in a fire, but you had some shiny spots. Let's hope 2009 is better, yeah?

So I was thinking. I heard something, a little while ago, don't remember where, may have been on the Daily Show, about newspapers -- the honest to god, old skool publications, like the New York Times and others -- going out of business. That fewer and fewer people buy them and fewer and fewer people prescribe to them. Then I read something on my friendslist just now about publications in general, and I started thinking about the written word, so bear with me for a second while I get thinky.

I doesn't surprise me whatsoever that newspapers are going out of business. News is more easily obtained online. You don't have to pay for it, it's immediate and continuously updated, while what you read in the paper is yesterday's news before the ink has even dried. Newspapers are going out of style. Magazines are another thing, I think, but I couldn't really tell you the difference. Maybe it's the fact that those "news" for lack of a better word, aren't as immediate. The news value of a lipstick doesn't drop because the magazine is a week old.

Personally, I like magazines. I read Cosmo sometimes, and I like the glossiness of it, the colors, the feeling of an actual magazine in my hand. I COULD read about this shit online, but what would be the point? The selling value of a magazine like Cosmopolitan or National Geographic or Playboy, why not, is that these are things you can wait for, read at your leisure, kick back in a chair or the bathtub or your bed. Do you do that with a news paper? I think not.

Books are on the same shelf. Some people, I've heard, get all doomsday-y about books. When it's not about kids preferring to watch TV and people reading less, it's about the actual, physical book disappearing, being replaced by the e-book. I don't think that's going to happen. Have you ever read an entire book online? It's the most annoying fucking thing in the world. Your eyes get all dry and squinty, your neck starts aching, your back starts aching, not to mention that there is really no good way to bookmark a page -- I prefer dogearing, myself -- or in any way work up the enthusiasm for reading when you're reading something online that is longer than a 100k. Reading The Scarlet Letter online? I wanted to kill myself after the first chapter, and that is NOT a heavy book! (The exception here being fanfic, of course. For some reason I rarely have objection to reading novel length fic online, but then I can't get that anywhere else, sad to say.)

Not to mention you can't have the satisfaction of hurling the book across the room when you read it online. For that reason alone, I almost wanted to buy Twilight -- throwing it into the nearest wall would have been so much more satisfying for my blood pressure than contemplating punching through my baby's screen.

There was a quote in a fanfic once -- a Smallville fic -- that I really liked: "Books are meant to be read, not coddled." You can't really read a book online. Books are meant to be read. They're meant to be dogeared and spilled coffee on and read so many times they fall open on the right pages and slapped around and READ. Can't do that with an online copy, unless you want to permanently fuck up your computer.

Yeah, I don't really know what the point of this was. Ignore me.

So this bandflesh thing. I'm going to be honest with you, when I first heard it had been hacked I laughed about it and thought it was pretty funny. But then I heard it had been deleted and then it kind of stopped being funny a little bit. What the hell is the point of hacking something just to delete it, is my question? If you're feeling hurt and misused and decide to hack it, do something funny instead, like write in a large font, "HI MY NAME IS [insert name here] AND I DON'T HAVE TO BE ANONYMOUS TO BE A BITCH" or something along the lines.

I don't like bandflesh. I can understand that a lot of people have gotten things from it, and I'm not against a comm that is all about the flail and capslock and commentficcing and picspams. What I don't understand, and will likely never understand, is the anon thing. To me, that's like... well, it's like that party Tom Cruise goes to in Eyes Wide Shut where everybody wears a mask, except possibly with less naked ladies on the pool tables.

I don't see the point of anon, is the thing. If you want to flail, flail by all means (and a lot of people do). If you want to commentfic really weird shit, do, for god's sake, I'll listen believe me. I don't understand this timidity in fandom, I don't understand why we're all so terrified of being judged. We're FANGIRLS, for crying out loud. Being judged is kind of part and parcel of what we are -- the people we are fans of judge us on a daily basis, and so does the rest of the world that can't understand this newfangled internet thing.

Truth be told, I'm not sold on the paranoia surrounding the fourth wall either, but that's your headache not mine. My stance is firmly that if people aren't prepared to consider your opinion and discuss it, then fuck them. If people judge you? Fuck them. If people don't WANT to know your side? Fuck them.

I've tried to understand bandflesh, I really have. But the thing is, anon does things to people. And that 10% of bandflesh that is not so funny? Is 10% of the most vicious pettiness I have ever seen, I'm truly sorry to say. I'm sure anonymity is good in a lot of ways, but it also makes people cruel. My friends have been targets. I've been a target by proxy, too. That hurt, I'm going to admit. I laughed about it, but it also took a lot of enjoyment out of bandom for a while for me, because being slagged didn't agree well with my depression, funnily enough. Not to mention that bandflesh is a public forum too. It isn't hidden, all the bullshit, whether valid or not, is out there for anyone to see. Sure, I can turn my back on it, and pretend it doesn't exist, but the thing is? I will always know it's there.

But, because it's occasionally a hurty, unforgiving place doesn't necessarily mean that it deserves to be deleted. There are things that get lost. To the person deleting it, I can only say, "grow up". To the people in bandflesh I can only offer, "I'm sorry, but maybe you should consider the reasons for it." I'm not saying it was right, because I don't think it was, deleting is going too far, but it was done for a reason, and maybe that is worth considering.

But what do I know? I can count the anon comments I've written in my entire life on one hand. Anon is not what I do. If I want to bitch and seethe, I'll bitch and seethe the hurt out someplace where other people don't have to see it, and then I can talk about it slightly more rationally. I'm not saying I'm not a bitch, because I am on occasion. I can be callous a lot of the time. But I stay away from anon because there is nothing I have to say that cannot be said openly. And if that makes me lame or you find me sanctimonious or whatever, fine. So be it. I'm always willing to discuss a point.

I've been reading fanfiction for about three and a half years now, and as you can tell, I'm ridiculously in love with it all. I love the way fanficcers write, I love it in all the way it's different from profic and I love it in all the ways it's similar too. I love fandom, and I love the characters, and I love everything that I have learned these past three years. And I have learned things.

Reading fanfic -- not even writing it -- has made me a much better writer than I was before. Fanfic done right does something amazing: it takes someone else's characters and makes them come to life. The whole point of fanfic is to keep the characters true to themselves, make them recognizable, and that is something I have learned. Fanfic has helped me give my characters depth. I've learned how much an expression, or a certain cadence to the way of speaking, or a movement can do for a character on a page. I have learned that it comes down to detail, that you don't have to describe the characters to death, because we all already know what Harry Potter looks like, thank you. I have learned about purple prose and Mary Sues, I've learned about constructing a plot, and I've learned to write porn, and I've learned to let the characters speak to me. I've learned the importance of a word.

That being said, it has spoiled me in certain ways too, as my NaNo has shown me. I am loathe to give people epitaphs -- "the girl", "her sister", "the demon" -- because nothing annoys me more when they write "the other boy" in fanfic. I'd rather use the name. I am loathe to write something like, "she flicked her black hair out of her eyes", because it's something that I try to avoid in fanfic (I already KNOW Gerard Way's hair is black, I don't need it to be pointed out), even though I know that the potential readers may find it useful to find out my MC's hair color.

But that being said, my weird hang-ups aside, I'm grateful. Fanfic has taught me a shitload of things, and has helped me write something that I can be proud of myself.

Even though I would really appreciate to find out how to incorporate Sirius' tattoos in the narrative right about now, thanks.

I looked myself in the mirror today, and thought, "...dude. Since when do I have a waist?" It's always pleasant when you take a picture of yourself and you think, "oh, look, I look nominally attractive today!"

( Satisfyingly MySpace-y, I thought. )

Yes. I'm short and fat. I live with that.

Went around and talked to the Sociolinguistics professor today and was gratified to see her face all but lighting up when I started talking about fandom. She was fascinated. I still haven't decided exactly what I'm going to write about, but we have an essay workshop either this week or the next, and I have couple of ideas I would like to explore. We'll see. That may mean I will have to interview some people, just for future reference, but it depends a bit.

Have been sleeping really badly tonight, and I was in a really weird mood today. Shit went down yesterday, nothing I can actually talk about as such, and while it wasn't BAD exactly (it was actually pretty funny while it happened), it left me in kind of a contemplative mood, not to mention weirdly paranoid. *sigh* Need funny things to distract me, which is why I am watching every Eddie Izzard dvd I own right now. Love him.

I hate it when LJ logs me out for no apparent reason.

Anyway, I've been reading God is great since I did that meme earlier, and as always that makes me think of my own stance to religion. Now, I'm violently opposed to organized religion -- violent in the sense that I kind of want to slap the Pope/various religious leaders upside the head for being stupid -- but as most of you probably already know, I still believe in God. I'm an agnostic occasionally verging on atheism and that works for me. I try to be a free-thinker, and these things do interest me a lot.

( I came to the conclusion while reading that there is a specific reason for why I need God in my life. )

Okay, that's it. I am officially a fan of the Misfits. They've done a cover-ish thing of Runaway. ♥_____♥

Anyway. Lately I've gotten kind of curious about Leathermouth. There are probably links somewhere if I looked long enough, but I thought I'd go the easy way and ask you guys if you could give me a couple of songs, or an album whatever. Oh, and Pencey Prep too? Please?

I also have a semi-unpopular fandom opinion to confess to: I'm not actually all that fond of the girlfriends(/wives). I know nothing of Krista, so I don't have an opinion on her, and I actually do like Alicia and Lyn-Z... but truth be told? Jamia, Keltie, Haley, whatever scene girl they've dated, Ashlee, Cassie, etc., do absolutely nothing for me. Nothing. I don't find Keltie, for example, very attractive. She has a killer body, sure, but I think she looks... old. And interviews with Pete and Ashlee makes me eyeroll so hard I'm almost straining something, for real.

Now I don't want people to think I'm one of these girls that'll bash the ladies for dating the boys, but the truth is I do a lot of mental editing where these ladies are concerned. The birthday pictures of Ryan and Spencer lately, for example? Threw me like hell, which was weird and kind of embarrassing. Now, as I said, I don't want to be one of Those Girls, but I'm in this for the boys not anybody else.

That being said, I know I have a lot of people on my flist who are fans of the girlfriends, especially Jamia and Keltie and I do think that it's fantastic that the girls have a fanbase as well, that they don't just get shit for dating the boys. But I'm all for the "girlfriends? What girlfriends?" approach, myself.

However, that doesn't stop me from having opinions about Haley's foundation. What? Her face was another shade than her neck! She did wear one killer dress though.

I feel like I've been spamming a lot the last couple of days and I'm sorry about that. I feel like I'm living on nervous energy right now -- people keep asking me questions I don't want to answer and I have to do something I really wish I didn't have to.

Anyway, the point of this post is this: thematchesfic. Brand new fic (and more) comm for The Matches that Bee and I are co-modding. I don't know if it's bandom that is doing things to my brain, because now I've not only written porn, but I'm modding two comms, what the hell?

It's a little weird to be honest, but at the same time it's interesting. I'm always hit by this when I post shit to comms, or read other people's posts on comms... we all sound kind of the same. We're trying to sell something in this barter economy of ours, and we all hide some sort of desperation ("please, please, read my fic") beneath wittiness. It's important to sound witty, wry, maybe a little sarcastic, charming, but at the same time you need to somehow convey that you know what the fuck you're talking about. Intelligence is important, hugely so, but unless you're writing meta, charm and persuasion is a grander weapon. Bring people to you, make them want to stay, make them want to hear what you have to say. I don't know if people are aware that this is what they're doing, but I suppose on some level they must-- they're posting their fic and other things to comm for a reason, right?

I really wish I wasn't this cynical about the whole thing.

But hey! Fic comm! For The Matches! I'd say we've got something going there. We'll see.

All this talk of tattoos on my flist has inspired me a lot, and now I REALLY want that fucking tattoo I've been putting off doing for YEARS. Rebecca and I went to look for inspiration online just a while ago (she liked the idea of evil pumpkins, a la Frank Iero, for example) and I found this.

( Tattoo talk. )

So, what do you think? Too ambitious?

I've been watching Doctor Who for a solid week now, and I have to say I adore David Tennant. Chris Eccleston was all well and good, but oh, Tennant. Brilliant! And hot like a hot thing. I always did have a thing for Scots.

Bee and I have been arguing back and forth about Companions and who we liked best and of course we can never agree. She likes Martha, which I guess is fair, since I like Martha better than I liked Rose (all her talk of forever and always was annoying me. Also, this might actually be the first show in the history of all shows that I want to keep gen). Of course, I thought Martha was kind of bland. My favorite is Donna, and I don't know, but I get the impression that this is an unpopular fandom opinion.

Or? I don't know, it just seems to me that Donna is the least liked of all the Doctor's Companions so far. But I LIKE her, you know? Girl's got spunk. She SLAPPED him! The Doctor! That is just amazing! See, I think he needs to be taken down a notch or ten sometimes, that Doctor, and Donna. Idk, she seems like she... she knows what he can do, and she wants to be with him, and she knows he changes things, makes her a braver or better person (because that's what the Doctor does, he makes people better), but she isn't impressed by his "I'm a genius" attitude, even though technically he is. Or so I think, but I've only seen a couple of episodes. We'll see what she'll be like when she and the Doctor have been traveling for a while. I liked both Martha and Rose more when they'd settled, so we'll see.

But riddle me this, Batman. What is with all the married jokes all of a sudden? You never saw them with Martha or Rose.

Oh, and? TBPiD IS FUCKING AMAZING. God, I'm so glad I'm in this fandom, despite all the money I'll ever see again.

Do you guys know what is depressing? When you read a fic that everybody and their grandmother are recommending and you just. Can't. Like. It.

I don't have any specific fic in mind for this, it just hit me last night as I was looting for fic recs. And the thing is, I really don't like talking about it either -- offending the writer or the writer's friends or whatever is never fun. Wank is only amusing when you're not a part of it. Luckily I do have Bee and Aly and we usually have pretty similar taste in fics. Of course, our "trashings" usually consist of us IMing back and forth about OCs and literary devices that doesn't work and scenes that doesn't quite flow and what could maybe be done instead, interspersed with the occasional OMG LEARN HOW TO SPELL. I may not be able to write very well, but nobody is as good a critic as the one who has no expertise whatsoever. *g*

Speaking of, I adore Oscar Wilde. I was reading through quotes of his recently and I stumbled over something that I thought was eminently suitable for my whole philosophy: "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." I had this discussion with Bee the other day, that for me it's not about WHAT you say, it's HOW you say it. People don't listen to what you say anyway, but they're very aware of tone of voice and body language. As long as you sound sure of yourself, you can sell almost anything. Which I suppose is kind of a cynical way of looking at the world, but... I think it's interesting though.

Panic gsf is eating my brain, when I'm not busy sort-of-maybe ficcing with Rebecca. We're writing this thing about Torchwood 4, the unit that disappeared, set in Belfast and it has lesbian romance which is always fun (Siân/Caro OMG OTP!!!1!). I'm good with developing characters and research, it's the writing that's less stellar. Although, I do feel like writing a little on the novel/whatever -- Jennie has that effect on me -- but I wouldn't know where to start. I would really want to just tell someone about the whole thing from top to bottom, about all the characters and all the shit that's been going on with them, but I... well, I don't really dare to, to be honest. It's a lot, I wouldn't want to bore anyone, and also, I'm REALLY self-conscious about the whole thing. :/

But I was talking about Panic gsf and I really like how most of my flist (and a lot of my friendsfriends) has tumbled onto the gsf bandwagon. It's the only way to end a Panic fic, really. They're so co-dependent. Anyway, I've been reading Forever, Now verse again and I'm reading into all the little gsf-y hints, and now I kind of want a coda (I'M SORRY, RACHEL) where Brian finds out about the four of them sleeping together and trying to come to grips with that, alternately Brendon angsting about telling Brian and the boys. Polyamory is kind of taboo after all. That being said, it wouldn't have to be FN-verse either. It could just be anything at all. Who can I rope into doing this for me? Alternately, who can tell me when I became such a whore for angst and h/c?

Ramble, ramble, this is the first moment alone I've had in days that wasn't illicit or at midnight. I'm doing beta! And listening to the Black Parade so loudly the floor is quaking with the bass line! \o/ Also in the plus column, my sister hasn't gotten pissed at me yet, and I dreamed about Jon Walker last night. Jesus Christ, I want to do him. CURSE YOU JON WALKER. CURSE YOU PANIC AT THE DISCO. *shakes fist*

So, as most of you know, I've been pimping bandom to Jennie pretty hardcore for the past couple of weeks. And also as most of you know, she finally caved in, and now I think she might actually (with a little luck) get active on LJ. Which, you know, would be fucking awesome.

But this whole thing has also made me think. I remember back when I started on LJ, almost two years ago, and introducing Jennie to it kind of makes me wish that I had a me back then. I mean, back then... what the fuck did I know about LJ? I had no friends, I knew nobody who even knew what LJ was irl, and I was just learning the ropes in fandom through fucking FF.net of all places. My first friended comm was metaquotes, which I still love and adore, and I found my first few friends and comms through that. But it took me almost a year to even begin to build an flist -- and even then it was NOTHING compared to what happened once I got dragged into bandom.

I didn't mind any of that, not really. I mean, having a large flist isn't the point, but interaction is, and I've got that now. The point of this is, I just sat down today and recced a bunch of comms to Jennie (among them metaquotes, incidentally) and I just realized how much of that insecurity I just removed from her experience. She has over 20 comments now on her first entry and it took me MONTHS to even get one comment on something, to get even the smidgen of interaction she has gotten now, even if it is just people welcoming her to bandom and telling her how doomed she is. She doesn't have to work for it in the same way I did, because I'm already here and I've paved the way.

And honestly? I am so fucking proud to be a part of that, and I'm proud of her for doing this, and I'm proud of all of you that commented on that first entry of hers and made her feel welcome, made her feel like she was talking TO somebody, not just a large empty room. THANK YOU.

I feel like an excited kid, showing her around my room and talking a mile a minute. This is my space, my thing, and to get to share it with her is. Well, pretty fucking amazing.