So the other day Steve tweaked me about something, and I said, whoa, wait, what?

For the longest time, Ivan Vorpatril has been the only character in my head who's had enough independence to have his own opinions, and notice and respond to me, and it was largely a function of what his personality is--he's a slinker, so what I noticed was he kept trying to slink off and hide from me. That and the intelligence.

The Steve in my head has apparently woken up enough to have... similar independence. And I didn't notice for the longest time because he didn't try to slink off--but that's not who he is. He's nice! He's a sweetie. Unlike Ivan, he doesn't hate me. So I didn't notice that his compliance wasn't the moldable plasticity of the ordinary kind of character I shape until he got comfortable enough to drop his sense of humor on me. It's subtle! Kind of wry. Usually self-deprecating. Except if he knows you well enough he'll nudge you the way he'd nudge himself. (See also: "Don't do anything stupid until I get back" "How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you.")

Seriously, most of my characters don't talk back! And Steve doesn't really do backtalk, but, he's decided he's hung out in my head long enough to start teasing me for my foibles. So that's apparently a thing now.

*laugh* I was talking to niqaeli about it and the differences between how the Steve in my head and the Ivan in my head behave towards me, and we rapidly concluded that no shit Ivan runs for the hills when he can and Steve doesn't feel the need--we do hilariously awful things to Ivan because we delight in watching him squirm, whereas we do cute, fun things to Steve because he grins like a loon and it's fantastic. This icon, this icon is TOTALLY the world I keep writing for Steve. The future is awesome! I keep introducing him to interesting people. Some of them are robots! Or centaurs! Or his soulmate! Why exactly would he run away?

Somewhere in my head Ivan is sulking, because there's a new chewtoy as independent as he is, who has somehow drawn a better lot in plot bunnies and has no interest in coming to hide in a corner with him.

So I've been dealing with an ongoing sense of TONY STARK HOW SO DAMAGED from both other people's fic and how he behaves in my head in fic I might be writing (note to tony: no steve is not pissed off about you maybe banging lady gaga because he is jealous; I promise you that is not it, tony). Both niqaeli and I keep retreating to the Losers for sanity because THOSE guys are so much less damaged. I am not kidding and wow what.

I have been poking around in the back of my head for Ivan, who went to ground months ago and keeps jumping fandoms to avoid me. After the time I found him in New York, I decided not to ask at all when I tagged him in Chicago. Ivan Vorpatril is the most active, independent character in my head, and pretty much the only one who recognizes my presence as a writer and to be slunk away from.

Anyway, I hunted him up and begged him to come back because omg less damaged than Tony fucking Stark and he looked around at my crop of plotbunnies and got pissed off at me because we have a plotbunny called the goddamn lunar base whose sole purpose is a Tony without damage for me to use to block regular Tony out. All the things I've done to Ivan but Tony gets a happyverse? And I said we'd sort of done that for, well, not for Ivan specifically, but for Vorkosiganverse, we have a massive AU where we fixed the Escobar war and stuff and Padma is alive and Ivan had both parents growing up (and no need to mention That Time He Was Emperor for 5 minutes) and is a diplomat and engaged to René Vorbretten!

And Ivan looked right at me and said, "You're not nice."

Muses.

SIMON ILLYAN WANTS ME TO LEARN GREEK.

CLASSICAL GREEK.

AND THEN ALSO MODERN GREEK PLUS ABOUT A MILLENNIUM OF INTERSTELLAR DRIFT.

Asshat.

ImpSec had to essentially regard Bothari as an extension of their own protection of Miles, or surely they would have come after Miles at Tau Verde much sooner. Because he slipped ImpSec but good on Beta Colony in Warrior's Apprentice.

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!

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.

So I put all the bits of V60 I've written in one doc and outlined the scenes in between that still need wrote and came up with a current total of ~8300 words. I think that means I still have a long way to go, but it feels less terrifying now that I can identify all the scenes. On the other hand it feels more terrifying that I identified places where I was like "if Matt knows X AND Y, why has he not pennydropped on the whole grand scheme yet?" and also: I can't figure out the order their fates get decided in (Matt, Danny, Harriet, Harriet's baby, Harriet's husband...probably reverse order, except Matt still comes before Danny).

At some point I guessed the whole thing would be about 30,000 words, and I think I'm still right, based on the ratio of what I've written to what I still need to write.

I realized that only one scene I've written is from Danny's POV, and I'm trying to figure out if I want to correct that by swapping over some other scenes or by dropping that scene and having Danny tell Matt about it later. The second sounds easier except for how there's one more scene later that's Danny off doing stuff that Matt doesn't know about, that I don't know how I'll deal with. Maybe he knows Danny went to see Count Vorkosigan but not what came of the meeting, because he's too involved with the Appalling Secrets eating his brain?

I feel like the ending needs some kind of bow tied on top. I don't know what that could be yet.

All of the stuff with Count and Countess Vorkosigan is yet to write. In case you were wondering, Cordelia continues to inflict total awesomitude on Barrayar despite its pleas for mercy. She has a plan to sneakily slip past the Council a bill that would essentially provide a way for any woman on Barrayar to get access to a uterine replicator on the Imperium's dime. Matt is quite impressed when he figures that one out. Also it's probably going to result in marriage law reform. *cough*

Then there's foodness and cluebat to write, and I never did find a place to fit in the detail about Byerly, but it may not be relevant. Also I have to find a way for some detail of Danny's family backstory to tie into the thing Matt is solving as an inspiration, like a "right, Barrayarans are fucking backwards! got it" moment or something, so I can have an excuse to insert that backstory. Maybe what constitutes a mutant at different classes--Danny's family kept his sister, whereas Harriet's mother-in-law killed her daughter.

Okay, after I get the fifteen minute scene out of the way, I'm going to write fic. That will be my reward for being like... halfway done.

In theory I was going to write White Collar (and maybe Vorkosigan) quickfic to try to qualify for Remix but um, my brain is producing non-qualifying plotbunnies. LIKE IVAN MEETS NEAL FOR NO FUCKING APPARENT REASON, DEAR MUSE, REALLY? But in the interest of writing being my reward, I will damn well write whatever makes me happy.

E's Otherwise
07-Ghost
Galaxy Railways (2?)
Gintama
Darker than Black?
Sakura Wars?
Planetes

So I'm um. Constructing vid source for a book series out of anime. At present I am actually mostly shopping uniforms; I have a sufficient number of soldier characters to cast that you know, I really ought to get them matching? Later I'll look for other things. Anime Characters Database unexpected boon--you can search by like, hair and eye color.

I seem to be gravitating towards the pointy chin, tiny nose, ENORMOUS EYES anime style. Galaxy Railways looks like it might be too realistic to match other footage, but it has SPACE, so I'm hanging onto it for now.

I am trying to walk the line between "so rare it's impossible to find copies" and "so popular even I've heard of it and viewers will recognize it and get thrown out of constructed reality."

Um. Yes.

ETA: okay, going nowhere in vid, but I am totally adopting this lady as the illustration to philomytha's story Grey. And then Ivan's head exploding a lot.