Off the prompt "cuddles."

Would it be wrong to make a vid to "My Funny Valentine" about Sanctuary's miserable lack of sets? Your looks are laughable, unphotographable, but you're my favorite work of art...?

A fun-filled weekend of fun has been had! And it's still a holiday tomorrow!

On Thursday night after niqaeli got off work, we drove out to LA to visit echan and jetpack_monkey. An all-night trip; we hoped to get there before the morning rush so I left 21 minutes from the end of the first episode of BBC's Sherlock, which traykor had put on while niq was still at work. Because those 21 minutes might actually matter to whether the freeways were totally clogged or just impenetrably labeled. Never mind spoilers, imagine being 3/4 of the way into any iteration of any Sherlock Holmes story and having to walk away. We arrived on echan's doorstep and despite being dead tired, I asked if we could put it on (I figured we'd watch it from Netflix, turns out they own the DVD). So we did. I have now seen Sherlock. Whoo.

On Friday, niqaeli and I slept in weird bits on and off but not at the same time as one another mostly, and echan came out as genderqueer on the internet, which I had known about for some time and niqaeli hadn't and wow, it was a relief to be on the same page as my braintwin finally. (jetpack_monkey's reaction, which echan IMed me about a couple weeks ago, was an adorable sleepy "Not that surprised. Still my echan." *heart* He is a sweet husband.) Also on Friday, we went out for sushi! At some point, we watched the Tik Tok vid for vampire Nikola Tesla from last year's Club Vivid and I explained in detail what was going on for echan, who has seen about five Sanctuary episodes, out of order. There was dinner from their favorite 24-hour delivery service because apparently most things in downtown LA close at like, six (including Starbucks! I've never known a Starbucks that closed that early!). Then the household (which also includes diannelamerc and lizbetann) decided to watch Being Human UK while niq and I variously went to sleep and passed out. Naturally, having fallen over before midnight, I woke up at about one in the morning and put some Dresden Files on (I watched three episodes! I remember what happened in some of them! I laughed at Netflix's description of Harry as ethics-challenged, because he seems to have a fairly strong personal ethical code to me! but maybe he fails it up later? who even knows).

On Saturday I did not wake at six in the morning like niq, who had fallen down and stayed down instead of Netflixing in the middle of the night, but I did manage to pull myself out of couch for trip to Little Tokyo with her and echan. I had a honeydew melon smoothie, then we went to bookstore and niq got lots of origami paper, then we had enormous bowls of noodles and niq forgot that my tolerance for alcohol is significantly lower than hers, so yes, half a bottle of sake will get me tipsy.

After that we went to Santa Monica: I had expressed interest in beach (any beach) and niq wanted to go to British import shops/a restaurant for tea in the area. Both beach and tea were lovely. Like, half an hour on the freeway + forty minutes finding parking + a good ten minutes of walking across the deepest beach on the coast to dunk myself in the ocean for fifteen minutes (priceless). Neither niq nor echan came in more than knee-high with me (though I full-body hugged echan when soaked to hear zir squawk), both feeling that the water was much too cold for my shenanigans, and it was cold? but I'd been expecting it to be cold and had sort of over-anticipated it so it wasn't as cold as I actually thought it would be? So for me it was pleasant. And wave-diving is fun. Mostly if you dive under waves right it rolls over you and you come back up behind it a few seconds later. Once I hit my dive wrong and got tossed around in the turbulence of the breaker a bit more and came up laughing in glee, so much so that I startled a woman nearby that I hadn't known I'd washed up next to into laughing with me. I, I sometimes forget other people are there when I'm staring out at the wild, wide ocean. On a wading beach, no one much comes out as far as me (you have to be waist-to-chest deep to get waves big enough to dive under), and also I have sort of um. Great transcendental fierce pagan joy that possibly puts me in an altered state with the ocean? Although part of that is wave-diving related endorphins. Even when you do the dive right, you end up with sore shoulders, and when you're standing there letting the little ones hit you waiting for the big ones, you end up with sore thighs. The ocean's like, big. It's all-encompassing and humans are so tiny and you get a bit battered. Endorphins: apparently I was kind of stoned for tea.

(For the record: it is possible I am not a traditionally sane person. Don't try this at home?)

I have always thought I would like to live by the sea. I think I must be part selkie. And I currently live in a desert and my families of blood and choice both live here so I don't know if I'll ever leave, really. But we fantasized about everywhere we would have residences if we won the lottery during tea and I think having a villa on the Mediterranean would be nice.

After that, we went to see My Chemical Romance. Apparently people had been standing in line since like, noon, and so we got there after the line had gone in, around eight, resigned to standing nowhere near the stage but frankly okay with with having done other things besides camp out for the show. echan noted that the mass of people in front of the stage was very tightly packed and not moving at all, no one leaving for drinks or food or bathroom or anything, fairly completely impermeable. Then during the opening number Gerard Way went crowd-surfing and I yelled in zir ear, "Now you know why." They'd been waiting for their opportunity to touch him.

Since I am apparently incapable of not snarking to the internet, I tweeted a fair amount during the show. Er, so I have a twitter account? It is decontextual, I um. Never mind. Here:

[Re the opening act] "Get that girl up onstage, I'm gonna eat her!" "Performance would probably be improved by onstage cunnilingus."
Friendly fans. At top of stair letting people coming up pass before I go down. A dude hugs me and says I smell nice. Seems stoned not scary.
The song "the only hope for me is you" sounds slightly less creepily psychotic when sung in concert to fans.
As per your request: you're a bad bad bad bad man, G-way. #mcr [I actually like House of Wolves a lot, but hahahaha I just. Watching him crawling all over the mic stand...]
"you ready *mumble*" is part of the song permanently in performance??? #mcr [re "Vampire Money"]
E says re Destroya: they burned the dictionaries first? #mcr
Okay sometimes I enjoy them unironically. #mcr [Re Teenagers]

Lost my bet on what their encore would be; they went back to Black Parade to close out the show rather than pulling out Sing.

We tried to go to a bar with food after the show, but that didn't work out well. We ended up getting food from Famima!! which I wish we could have in Valley of Hell, but wiki says they closed like half their test sites and now exist solely in downtown LA. Then we fell down.

Come Sunday morning, brunch was delivery, much hugging was hugged, and niq and I got on the road about 1:30. We plotted many terrible things to do to Ivan on the way, which also involved doing terrible things to Gregor. Having Illyan in my head is oh, my God, a trip and a half. *flail* I cannot even describe. Eventually there will be fic. I hope. The shortish snippet I was going to try for wants to be about 8-12K because Ilyan's going to cross-reference everything. Cry. Yay. Something.

My calves, my thighs, and my shoulders are all sore and tired. When I lay down I can feel my legs vibrating. When I get up it hurts. Muscle aches everywhere. I mean, I was expecting this? Walking, walking in sand, swimming, more walking in sand, more walking, standing at a concert for two and a half hours, then driving several hours will do that to you. (Interestingly my legs didn't hurt while I was driving, only when I stopped. Yet I kept stopping to stretch them out, because I was afraid they would like, calcify in driving stance.) Also that whole paragraph up there about endorphins is pretty hilarious to me now. But I've almost entirely gotten my hearing back after only a day! (Concerts. Concerts are loud.)

Plotting for future trips in both directions proceeds apace. OCEAN. In related news: I am interested in becoming a touring fangirl and driving to visit people I have met on the internet. Contemplate this entry and imagine all the fun you could have with me!

Okay, I should just stop freaking out about this hole in my vid and remember that next week's episode will probably provide more material. SINCE APPARENTLY ( s3 spoilers and speculation )

Don't get me wrong, I'm kind of a giant dork and looking forward to this episode a lot, just, wow, show. You are deeply, deeply cheesy. It is such a good thing I like chevre.

Deeply amused that echan seems to have inhaled Sanctuary and left me live watching squee in IM while I was not there.

I, I think my fannish brain is back online? My finals are all over except the waiting (the only class that hasn't graded stuff yet is the only one where there was any question what my grade was, DAMN IT). But I am out from under stress mountain in terms of needing to do stuff and not feeling guilty for sleeping for the first time in like, two months.

In the interest of getting some fannish (& house) stuff done, I am making myself the following daily to-do list for the summer. I will spend a minimum of one hour a day on the following, in this order of priority:

--homework, unless I'm absolutely completely caught up on homework, nothing available to get ahead on
--housework (cleaning, sorting, unpacking)
--plotting the music video (writing, storyboarding, budgeting, scouting, building the land sail)
--writing fanfiction (an hour or 300 words)
--vidding

In other news, fannish things in my brain lately:

Vorkosigan. I probably won't be writing the White Collar/Vorkosigan time travel story, but there's a chance reference to it may fall into Secret Agent Ivan 'verse, because Illyan turned The Vanishing Man into a psych test problem. In the fast-penta interrogation Neal said he was a time traveler, by which the interrogators concluded he was delusional, but fairly high functioning, since he hadn't tried to claim it without fast-penta. Then he vanished out of a cell without a trace. The psych test is to ask the testee how he did it, hand them any data they want, and see how long it takes them to get to, "Well, maybe time travel is possible?" Too fast, and they're too credulous for ImpSec work. Too slow, and they're too inflexible. Miles is the only one who came up with data to ask for that ImpSec had not actually collected. Ivan got handed the problem unofficially when he was fifteen or so, and later on when he was tested for Service aptitudes officially at the Academy he blew threw it a little fast. Later Illyan asked him if he'd forgotten how the test worked or was just trying to fake incompetence. And this is Ivan. It was totally to fake incompetence.

Ivan-muse is annoyed with me for brainstorming about wee-him, it's harder for him to weasel out of. *grin*

Today the "Diplomatic Relations" bunny woke up in my head, which is the one where Serg's mother survives childbirth but sadly her mothering doesn't actually make Serg saner since her life has made her kind of shit at connecting, so thirty years later she kills Serg personally, thus bypassing the necessity whole Escobaran War fiasco. So when Aral meets Cordelia, under similar circumstances to Cordelia's Honor, the War Party is still banging the gong for war but without really having the most influential member they did and not having the emperor handing the rope to hang themselves, so Aral feels free to say "fuck it" and just open diplomatic relations with Escobar. My brain was running around "what would be marginally different about Aral and Cordelia's meeting" and the answer is, he's afraid this is a succession thing. With Serg no longer in the picture, an attempt on Aral's life is much more likely to be related to Imperial Succession. He's also kind of terrified that when they get back to civilization there'll be news that the boy Gregor has been killed and he needs to go wrest power back from whoever was trying to kill enough people close to the throne to get in. So he's actually laughing his ass of in relief when it turns out to be a War Party thing.

Sanctuary. I have an active Sanctuary plotbunny and an active Sanctury vid. The plotbunny is *facepalm* terrifyingly idfic, wherein ( s1/s2 spoilers )

Okay, everyone raise you hand if your get why this is idfic. grey_bard didn't, because he's not using his power for evil, right? Hilariously, niqaeli is so telepathic with me that not only did she get it right away, she started telling me his stance on powers before I had gotten to it.



I'm also working on a vid about Helen's exes/stalkers. It's to a JoCo song, and last night I became concerned that the visuals were not over the top enough for the song. On close review, it would appear Nikola is totally over the top enough, but I may need to hunt for more Johnny. echan told me he comes off looking reasonable aside from the murders, which makes Helen look judgmental for rejecting him. Ha. Haha. Oh my god. Fannish logic, you guys.

Does anyone feel like doing a photoshop beta for me? I did up the credits for the vid I'm working on in the style of a fairly identifiable shot for a recent Sanctuary episode, and I want someone to look and tell me if there's noticeably faky places in the image. That are my fault and not Sanctuary's shitty effects, ahem.

I really wish there was a fuckyeahviddingflamingo. "BANG OUT VID IN TWO DAYS, SPEND TWO WEEKS PERFECTING SPECIAL EFFECTS SHOT FOR THE CREDITS"

I have about 1520% of a vid and Johnny's smug face is mocking me. I keep cracking up. This is good for me.

You know what might be better for me?

Sleep.

Just sayin'.

PS The hunt for Sanctuary betas will be hot shortly.

ETA: My god, there's a lot of women pulling guns in this. Should I call it a motif or just admit that the vid is 90% Helen pointing a gun at people (and 10% Ashley pointing a gun at people)?

Nearly had a screaming meltdown on--late Friday night, early Saturday morning? I think? I've been at niqaeli's since then, aside from a brief run by my house for textbooks. I should probably think about going home. I have a small spot of homework to do in the next twelve hours, and I'm thinking about sleeping.

I want to be creative. I fired up Final Cut but that didn't really go anywhere; I opened up googledocs and thought about writing Sanctuary fic--I'm all caught up and have this ridiculously detailed plotbunny in my head about the intersection of the sexcapades of Helen Magnus and Vampire Nikola Tesla (with other people) that I'm actually kind of ashamed of, oh my god, the things that live in my head, I don't even.

But what came out was more Echo Bazaar fic. I'm sort of... I don't even know, this fic can't decide whether it wants to be game-play fic or narrative fic. At least it's settled on first-person for the narrative sections.

( bit of what I wrote tonight )

I really want to have some art in the story, it feels wrong not to have art in Echo Bazaar fic. I sent a message to someone asking if I could use some of the beautiful stuff I've seen go by on my droll (*waves*), I sort of flailed and dorked around incoherently a lot so you know, hopefully I don't come off as completely illiterate. *facepalm*

I LOVE MY BRAINTWIN. We had a conversation about how much of our facepalm at Sanctuary's poor grasp of genetics and evolution could be fixed if Abnormal were code for [story spoiler]magic[/spoiler], and then I told her to write fic, about it, and she totally did! Yay fic!

So apparently where all of the Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis creative people who got fucked over by SGU went was Sanctuary. I'm like, I don't even follow TV director's names all that much and I'm recognizing a crapload of them. And the writers. Damien Kindler, Martin Wood, Peter Deluise...

Yeah so this might explain why it's a brand of ridiculous I enjoy? I mean, vampire Nikola Tesla.

Meanwhile, watching stuff on Syfy has let us know that the Flan is now working in syfy movies of the week; I full expect his character to be slashed with Hewlett's from the megapython whatever one within days. Also he looks like crap. We really hope that's a character thing.