that sweet, sad thought has faded now

FRIENDING POLICY

I am friend free. You want to give me access or subscribe? Go right ahead. If I think you're interesting or that we share interests or, I dunno, if it's the third Tuesday of the month and the sky has miraculously turned green, I will return the favor.

REQUEST POLICY

My actual policy is over here. In summary, REQUESTS ARE ALWAYS OPEN.

WARNINGS

ONE: In this journal you will find a crazed Final Fantasy fan. I can honestly say I've played at least an hour of all of them and all the way through most of them. I've been in Final Fantasy VII fandom since before Advent Children. I will be quite honest: not much pisses me off more than someone claiming to be a fan of FFVII who hasn't played the original game, and if you write fic, yes, I judge you. (Yeah, I went there.)

TWO: My interests go like this: YURI > HET > > > YAOI. I don't empathize well with men and male bodies really don't interest me. I have a total of exactly four slash pairings and do not generally seek out slash. Final Fantasy slash especially is just... boring to me.

THREE: Hard-line feminist toeing the line of misandry. Not gonna lie: I border on radical feminism and I Do Not Like Men. I have my reasons. Go ahead and ask, if you want to know. I'm not sensitive about the topic.

Si has heartworms. His case is treatable, thankfully. Now we just need his annual URI to clear up so it can be done... relatively safely. As safely as it can be, I guess.

---

In other news, Jason sent me Dragon Age: Origins (Ultimate Edition for PS3). I received it in early November and I... uh...

Well. I've now beaten it three times, have three more Origins playthroughs to go through (one Human noble, one Dalish, one City Elf), and am still utterly enthralled.

Family drama continues unabated. If it's not one side of the family being absolutely insane, it's the other. Suffice to say I've started designing a beaded necklace in my head. ...made out of the hyoid bones of my relatives.

Work is worky. Bosses are crazy and illogical, but the job itself is still okay.

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I just had the most godawful nightmare. In it, I was being fired from Receivia in a totally dsouchebag way. Except that Receivia was my local Bi-Lo, and I was told to go to "pharmacy" as in the pharmacy department.

And then an MOD from Geenlife sing-songed, "Badge, please." And I was like "Are you firing me?" "Yeah. You said hell, according to another employee."

Totally fucked up bogus nightmare.

---

Also, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

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Ganked from telesilla: Out of curiosity, if I was chained up in your attic/study/basement/library/secret lair, and I had to write you one story, what would you ask for? Or alternately, what's something you always hoped I'd write but think isn't likely to happen?

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No more riddles,
No more jests.
No more curses you can't undo,
Left by fathers you never knew...
No more quests.

No more feelings;
Time to shut the door.
Just -- no more.

Running away, let's do it --
Free from the ties that bind!
No more despair,
Or burdens to bear,
Out there in the yonder.

Running away -- go to it!
Where did you have in mind?
Have to take care:
Unless there's a "where,"
You'll only be wandering blind.
Just more questions;
Different kind.

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(06:07:10 PM) nagia: Well, now I have a name for the bastard.
(06:07:23 PM) nagia: Tadashi.
(06:07:53 PM) leviathanmirror: What's it mean?
(06:08:50 PM) nagia: "loyal"/"true"
(06:09:05 PM) leviathanmirror: *amused*
(06:10:17 PM) nagia: ?
(06:15:51 PM) leviathanmirror: Just seems like an odd name for him.
(06:19:08 PM) leviathanmirror: Although I suppose most parents don't name their kids "Rapey McRaperson."

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Context, for the weak:

I've been re-reading a lot of Western Ink's RK fic, because I've been wobbly emotionally and clearly Aoshi/Misao is the delicious pie to make me less wobbly, right?

Wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

All but two fics of hers have an Aoshi who is squicktastic (one's a silly piece of fluff with a faintly unnerving ownership undercurrent I choose to ignore; the other leaves Aoshi in crazypants mode and just extrapolates on possible WRONGWRONGWRONG scenarios from there -- so it's deliberate). In one of the fucked-up squicky fics, Aoshi apparently has not thought of Misao "bodily" until she mentioned scars, and did not think of Misao sexually until she mentioned a scar on the inside of her thigh. Which she later confessed she'd received in an attempted rape.

Does this disturb you yet? No?

It gets better: it's only after Misao has revealed that she was attacked and almost forcibly penetrated that Aoshi begins to think of her as available. Now that she's, direct quote from the fic, "stained."

Say it with me: "WHAT."

From a fandom perspective: Let's go into all of the ways this idea is fail: 1. STAINED IS JUST FAIL, 2. AOSHI WOULD KNOW THAT BECAUSE 3. HE'S THE LEADER OF A NINJA GROUP THAT 4. CONTAINS WOMEN. The odds of him NOT knowing a woman who had been assaulted (never mind men who had been assaulted, never mind the fairly high probability he's been assaulted himself) is staggeringly LOW.

Okay, fine, if that's just the way the character thinks and he has Meiji Restoration morals, then I expect the author to hint at this. There needs to be some kind of dividing line between author/narrator. I don't want to see this character think something so reprehensible, and then get everything he wants or asks for, get to force a marriage to a younger female character he's only recently decided was available, and... consequence free.

No.

So I've been writing a what-could-have-been. Not just a faintly new spin on canon, but a "where 'Daughter Figure,' could have gone." Sort of a cross between a remix and a response fic, I guess.

---

More AIM logs of hilarity:

(following a discussion of what might happen if Misao were turned into an actual weasel:)

(10:10:34 PM) leviathanmirror: Okina would be forced to insist that Aoshi marry Misao.
(10:10:52 PM) leviathanmirror: His behavior was totally inappropriate for a man and unmarried weasel.

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Tell me that moron didn't.

Seriously? SERIOUSLY? I try to stay chill about people being Wrong On The Internet but good goddamn, that high-handed fuckwittery just makes me want to set her on fire.

---

Also blah blah G&T please to stop being reticent when I'm at home and chatty when I'm at work.

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Hyperfocus: totally my favorite thing. Not often I can start working on something at midnight, not notice any conversations online or dog activity offline (thank you, Si, for deciding that the LESS full garbage can would be good for... whatever the hell it is you were doing), look up at two AM, and realize that London Fog is well on its way to not making a goddamn lick of sense.

(I'm pretty sure that's its goal. Personally, I'd prefer it if the thing made some sense, but between Vince and Yazmin narrating.. I'm not going to keep my hopes up. Melis left Vince's brain about as human as a block of provolone, the only-temporarily-named-as-yet not-twins are stoned out of their damn minds, and Yazmin is falling, even if there's more to her than I originally thoguht)

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The news of the weekend:

1. The visit with Learning Disability kid went pretty well. The ADHD really, really fucks with his concentration. I'm talking, we're sounding out words, and it goes like this:

Q: Okay, now what are the next three letters?

A: c...i...o...?

Q: Awesome! So what do those letters sound like?

A: Cuh... ih...oh?

Q: Do you remember what your phonics says about c and i?

A: It's a "shuh" sound!

Q: Right! So let's throw it all together, what do those three letters mean?

A: Cuh... ih... oh.... Caution?

Q: Not like that, sweetheart. Only use those three letters for me?

A: [something about how 'helicopter has a c in it.' No joke.]

2. Sick like a sick thing, and the walk in clinic was no help.

3. Started a replay of Legend of Dragoon. Keep forgetting how much fun this game was, despite the terrible!

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Texbook irony: using tool designed to prevent massive fail causes massive fail.

Have learned that GRUB is like Da Hui.

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So, Ralph's fiancee brought her grandson up for the weekend. At some point, my mother volunteered me to help him with his reading comprehension, since he doesn't have any. Which, you know, fine. I'm not thrilled with being volunteered to do something that I don't really know how to do, and "It'll be fine! :D You're great with little kids! :D" is not particularly comforting.

No joke. I wanted to say, "Uhm, that's not how this works," but I figured I'd at least give it a try. It never hurts to try, right? And at the very least, I'd keep him from irritating the hell out of the neurotypical members of the household.

Then he got here. Turns out in addition to his reading comprehension/ADHD problems, he also has night terrors. So the first night he was here, he woke up screaming at about two. Once I was more awake, I felt really bad for him. I still do. The worst part of it is, he doesn't even remember what he saw. That's such a fucked-up thing for a nine year old kid to deal with.

So last night, Marge left him a nightlight and also left my bathroom light on. As far as I know, that did the trick for him.

Unfortunately for me, just about the only thing I require (apart from medicinal help) to fall asleep is darkness. Not "near darkness". Not "mostly darkness." I mean I need the room to be pitch black. I stopped using regular alarm clocks because they keep me awake -- and even the teeny tiny light HK-47 makes when he's charging can keep me up, if I'm in an insomnia cycle.

So between his nightlight, the bathroom light, and the family of mice throwing some kind of goddamn mouse disco in my air vent, I didn't get to sleep until around four. I know I was awake at three thirty. And then I got up at six.

---

( TL;DR: HughesNet licks syphilitic donkey balls and I still haven't completed my download of Mint )

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Many things have happened of late.

I've lost... I'd guess about fifteen pounds. Really depends.

( boring work stuff )

I've bounced around between the FFXIII Epic Of Which We Do Not Speak, Gifts&Treasures, and a new original thing of which I will not speak. I don't want to jinx it.

(Which reminds me -- most litcrit/lit comp corrections and eccentricities don't bother me. Go ahead and correct my conjugation, my punctuation, etc. But if you're seriously going to judge a poem by the presence or absence of a rhyme scheme. I don't even. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ON?)

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This is what you get when you combine that "one sentence from your WIPs" meme with open letters to your fics.

Dear "These Graces That Hold Me":

Please stop being so difficult to write. Also, please stop throwing Fang's verbal mannerisms into my everyday speech, thanks.

"There has to be a way," she says while the very beginnings of a plan spool together in her head, tightening tiny knots in the loose, unravelled mass of threads that her mind has become.

---

Dear "Gifts and Treasures":

Something needs to happen, damn you!

For all that this crumble castle was brand new, was potentially lethal territory, following Yuffie was exquisitely familiar.

---

Dear "First My Left Foot":

An actual plot--or at least a few more specifics on the conflicts--would be nice. So would a first line.

For an instant Lightning entertained that idea that if she'd known this was what Fang and Vanille had meant by, "Wake up," she'd have stayed asleep.

---

Dear "Hollow Hearts":

Pleae, please, for the love of the Watergod, PLEASE decide whether you're an angsty examination of moving on/nightmares, or whether you're a moody (but snappily witty) exploration of nightmares, growing up, and friendhsips that become something up.

Vincent's 'do something about this' expression turned sour like vinegar, morphed from mild disapproval into full-blown 'You are a bad influence on children, I KNEW it.'

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On the subject of work: blah blah blah, people quitting in droves, they fired one of my co-workers a week after she handed in her notice, some idiot re-printed a report and slotted it in right after the original so I spent most of today picking up all the crap the other billers had dropped. Kind of ready to poison the nicotine supply.

On the subject of writing: blocked on Gifts&Treasures, halfway wanting to start "First My Left Foot" but not really wanting to. I want to make delicious typewriter noise, but I don't know what I'm going to make delicious typewriter noise with.

Everything else: DDR is fun (I never would have guessed), I'm slowly but surely warping my younger cousin into an anime fan, and... life is okay. Things are changing, things are staying the same, and I can finally switch from "Freezing Cold Fucked Up Sex.m3u" to "ULTIMATE Superspecial Awesome INSPIRATION REMIX.m3u" (Anybody surprised that I have a playlist explicitly titled "Freezing Cold Fucked Up Sex" can... no, nevermind, there's no help for you.)

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"Junctioning is Complicated" went out last night. First time in a while that I've let something go when I was unsatisfied with it.

I'll prooobably revisit the fulltext, "no fear of character limits" version sometime this weekend.

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( For those curious about the way my brain works while writing: )

Holy shit. The dogs freaked out at something three times tonight and woke Ralph. While I tried to calm them down and figure out what was going on out there, Ralph came out, had a hissy, and tried to put them both out for the night. I slammed the door closed and told him he was doing no such thing. Poor, poor Dudemeister (stray baby bassett hound we picked up this weekend; he's 6~8 months old, very, very gentle, and very trainable. But he's another story altogether) chose that moment to wander in through the open door.

Ralph snapped a second time in a row, and tried to use verbal comments to get an unsocialized, mostly un-trained puppy to leave the house. when that failed, tried to drag him out by the scruff of the neck.

I tried to stop him once by trying to block his hands. When he didn't quit, I shoved him, and told him in no uncertain terms that he would not be laying a hand on that puppy.

Shoved him. As in physically forced him back by his shoulders, not caring if he fell, not caring where he landed.

He was really light. I didn't hurt him, but I could have.

I actually snarled at him. Like, my voice for that entire conversation was... really thick in my mouth.

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Well, I'm twenty-two, and have been for twenty-five minutes. Don't feel any different from twenty-one, except maybe a bit more exasperated.

I don't think my mother understands just how not important this day is to me. It's a minor oddity, like a "Huh, I never expected to live this long." Honestly, the fact that it's 17 July is far, far outweighed by the fact that it's a Saturday. (I know I say I never expected to live this long every year, but that's because it's true. It's especially true this year, considering who I was in May.)

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/stares at FFX/blitzball drabble.

There's probably a reason I don't write Tidus often.

/stares at it some more.

/ponders water acclimation, oxygenation, sensory dep during the acclimation process, the difficulties of swimming against gravity with no apparent leverage, and exactly how blitzers are supposed to survive being suspended in a giant ball of water and then body-slammed. Repeatedly.

Seriously, any human should drown fairly quickly in those circumstances.

Also, if this drabble doesn't stop being about coaches and start being about the dark quiet of the prep tank, the ferocious metal blaring outside, the blazing neon followed by blinding floodlights, and the way the water pulses when it's not dripping off his skin, I will do something very not good.

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Yet again, Winamp is fucking creepy: just as I was sitting down to really contemplate "Peace it is, until the rising of the dawn," as a prompt, and where I could use it, Winamp queued Poe's "If You Were Here."

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Totally random question that in no way relates to an in-development FFXIII epic: after ( cut for spoilers )

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In other news: my dad is an asshole, my mom is stressing me out, and Gifts&Treasures isn't coming together.

Also, I should proooobably get off this damn Yuffie/Shalua kick.

---

Another question: since Oerba was apparently a communal society, would it have marriage in the modern sense (jointly owned property, usually joint finances, tax breaks)? I'm sure there were life partnerships and child-rearing unions, since they're kind of unavoidable if you want your humans not to read as totally alien, but would the word "marriage" or "husband" or "wife" been tossed around?

---

Also, the universe keeps giving me the best presents. I turned twenty, it gave me TDK; I turned twenty-one, it gave me a job; I turn twenty-two, it gives me insurance AND a movie directed by Chris Nolan and starring Ellen Paige. Clearly, the week of the seventeenth is when the magic happens.

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