Off the prompt "cuddles."

I have written 469 words of my c_i sesa. Including the part that cracks niqaeli up.

I am sort of torn about whether this entry is primarily notes for myself so I don't lose track of things I want to write, or at least partially for other people and/or my feedback addiction. It sort of affects whether I filter it or not, you know.

Current plotbunny batch:

Captain America somehow woke up all the Iron Man plot bunnies. And then added some more. So I have Mistress Pepper and Tony who is a nightmare running around my head, as well as Tony who built Pepper as a robot and Steve who is like "The future is so awesome! Who else is a robot?" But I also have new ones.

( the goddamn lunar base )

Further plotbunnies: Subsequently we rapidly arrive in the region of all niqaeli's fault.

( The Lady and the Captain )

( Captain America's Clone )

Also I might be making a Losers vid. To Lady Gaga. Maybe.

Fuck all, I guess I'll go ahead and post this for people to read. It amused me to get written out. I did say I'd write things out more when I had more cope.

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.

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!

"I blame your mother, you know. Always pushing that egalitarian tripe..."

"Oh, come on," Miles was stirred to object. "Mother’s as apolitical as you can get and still be conscious and walking around."

"Thank God, or she’d be running Barrayar today."

(Oh Piotr. Yeah, I think that was Piotr going "apolitical, my wrinkled vor ass.")

me: oh MILES. Right, he was 17 when he declared his mother was apolitical [this is a statement we quote and laugh at FREQUENTLY]
niq: 17 and dumb? very vor?
me: huh no actually I wonder if he assumed that because she didn't politick like a woman: he's known Lady Alys his whole life
niq: how fucking apolitical did he think killing the pretender was of her? She politics like a betan. she educates.
me: I knowwwwww. Also she sees how much she can poke Aral to support--so Miles probably thinks his father is VERY LIBERAL for putting various bills up to the council, not having quite figured out that his mother practically wrote them, because he is DUMB
niq: But, no, seriously, I mean. it's not like Miles would be unaware of his mother's role in ending the pretendership. That was not very apolitical of her, honestly. I mean, even for going in to rescue her kid, still?
me: Tish. that's not politics, that's WAR! Seriously he's wee.
niq: er. right. because those are so very different.


Oh here's another good quote. Aral, WHAT was that turn of phrase?

"You must excuse me. Duty calls. I have to go feel up that rampant creeper Vordrozda, for the greater glory of the Empire."

me: Hmm, I wonder when/how Miles swore oath to Gregor. He didn't make it into the academy, so he didn't swear as a soldier, but he has sworn directly to Gregor (it comes up when he was taking Mayhew's oath). Oh god. I bet they were like, five and ten respectively and playing Vorthalia the Bold, and Bothari was like, "..........................." and Aral sort of facepalmed when told.
niq: heh
me: and when told what a REAL and SERIOUS and LEGALLY BINDING oath he had taken, Miles was like YAY I AM JUST LIKE VORTHALIA
niq: snort.
me: tell me I'm wrong
niq: it'd be adorable and facepalmy

When tallying death tolls, should we count demons and hosts seperately?

When tallying screentime, should already dead people (ghosts, zombies) count automatically as torture/gore/scare porn or should it matter what they look like (see 5.15, 5.16)?

ETA per niq: Relatedly, how should we class gender on demons? Should it be based on the host we see them die in, or should we be taking a look at what different kinds of hosts we seem them in and what kind of host they take most?

ETA2: Blood goatee: gore porn? not gore porn? ETA3: Also, bloodplay, as in Ruby cutting herself up for Sam's delectation, etc: gore porn? not gore porn?

aris_tgd selected these icons of mine for me to talk about. If you would like me to do the same, pls comment.

This is an image I screencapped from an episode of 7 Days, which was a trashy time travel show I enjoyed before the internet regularly pirated stuff, and which has never been released on DVD, which means the only copies circulating now are from Spike with a squished aspect ratio and cut for syndication. It might be a service to the internets if I capture my first-run VHS recordings. Or not. It really was a fairly trashy show. I'm easy when it comes to time travel stuff. Anyway, dude on the left tied to the car in nothing but his flag boxers is Frank Parker, our weekly time traveler. Those are his lucky boxers, given to him by dude on the right, Craig Donovan, who is, at this moment, saving his ass. Adorable slashy buddies, they are. It occurs to me that Frank and Donovan are former and current Navy SEALs, so I have a route to writing a crossover made in hell with NCIS. This icon was made during the Bush administration; I am not so often moved to use it anymore.



This one is Andy Warhol Mason Eckhart from Mutant X, a show I used to enjoy with j_crew_guy for like a season before there were bizarre cast changes and hair changes and really, all the cheesy goodness was eventually leached away. I mean, the plot was always bad? But it got worse. Eckhart is the nemesis-cum-ex-boyfriend of the team leader for the ensemble of not-X-men, Adam. Something horrible happened to Eckhart that he blames Adam for, which may or may not be true, I honestly forget how much of what happened we fanwanked and how much was revealed in seasons I don't consider canon and how much they just didn't say. Anyway, his immune system was shot to hell so he now wraps himself in Saran wrap on a daily basis. We always found this really, really kinky.



The quote on this one is from a David Bowie song entitled "Seven Years in Tibet," and the character pictured is Creegan from the short-lived US version of Touching Evil, who has been shot in the head and has brain-damage related behavioral problems that make his take on fighting crime somewhat wacky. I adored the US version of this show--it was gorgeous--so much so that I have never gotten around to watching the UK version, which by all accounts is very different. For one thing, the US actor had a scar on his head, but on the other side of his head from the original character, so they rewrote how his damage manifested to be accurate to the new location. I vidded this fandom to this song, though the icon came first, if I recall correctly. I use this icon for emo whine entries a lot, and niqaeli made off with it as one to use when posting for me or when I'm hijacking her journal. (Likewise I have her kitten icon.)



The image is from the cover of Moxy Früvous's final album, You Will Go To The Moon, the lyric from the song "Boo Time." This was one of those touchstones for me, the line it's not forbidden to be what you are, as a baby dyke coming into her own. This is one of my earliest icons, from way back when I started my (live)journal. You can see from how crap it is *G*



I modeled my version of Woman!Tony Stark off of Corky from the early Wachowski brothers (you know, the Matrix dudes) film Bound. I photoshopped it myself and somewhere there's a bigger copy but I'm not going to link to it because it was never intended to be more than an icon so it's kind of rough. I was writing a story to go with this that I never quite finished; I was in fact going to inflict the title "Iron Maiden" on it (Pepper snarked, "Maiden? You, ma'am?"). I'm trying to find an entertaining pull-quote, but while I outlined it fairly thoroughly, I didn't write out a lot of it. Tony Stark is pretty much the same as a woman but the world bends differently around her. For instance, when she gets back from Afghanistan she gets asked (in a well-meaning let-us-help-you way) if she was raped. And she's like HELLO ARC REACTOR IN MY CHEST, WHO GIVES A SHIT? Also I love Tony/Pepper a lot but for some reason it's like, ten times hotter if they're lesbians. Go figure.



Danny Tripp from Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip is terrified of his girlfriend, who is also his boss. This is one of my few animated icons, and also one someone else made! Gosh.

Vid: The Long Spear
Vidders: MANY--Please credit to "jmtorres, niqaeli, et al", not JUST to jmtorres. This was NOT a solo vid
Music: The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel, with additional material
Fandom: Star Trek and... Star Trek. Yes.
LINK (right-click or ctrl-click to download and save): http://houseoftorres.dreamhosters.com/vids/jmtniqetal-startreks-longspear.mp4 (60MB) (link updated 16 May 2020)

I promised since, oh, about the second time I saw the movie that this vid would say everything I wanted said and that if it didn't I would cry and hang up my hat as a vidder because clearly I would be no good at communicating in the medium.

So I will limit my remarks here and let the vid do most of the talking. I really only want to say three things:

1. An expansion of the credits:
jmtorres and niqaeli were the primary vidders in the sense of putting material on the timeline.

traykor, echan, and grey_bard did lots and lots additional clipping above and beyond what jmtorres and niqaeli managed.

grey_bard also recorded the vocal track for the last verse specifically for this project. The other women whose singing I sampled for this vid are Joni Mitchell and Lorenna McKennit.

killabeez and slasher69 are two vidders to whose work we paid homage. Those vids were: Killa's Dante's Prayer, because Killa is a seminal Trek vidder of the modern era (Dante's Prayer has been cited as "Hey, you guys! We can use those computers things for vidding!"), and Kandy Fong's Both Sides Now, which is, so far as I know, the earliest vid of which we have visual record (see this OTW journal article for more on the history of vidding).

The following fangirls took pictures of themselves in Vulcan salute for me to use at the end of the vid: ysobel, lierdumoa, settiai, lferion, azurelunatic, revolutionaryjo, gchick, zarhooie, missingwatch.

elfling made the awesome costumes we wore to Club Vivid.

I would also like to give a special nod to nshoe, who, while not one of our women's voices in the traditional sense, did help out with Memory Alpha abuse for clipping and making one of my hard drives live again. His wife, niqaeli, also notes that he was very patient with the crazy women in the house.

2. I did, briefly, want to explain the title, because I used a metaphor that I thought was not uncommon, but google entirely disagrees. So you may never have heard it before unless you read all the same stuff I do. papersky writes about her spearpoint theory; the example she was using it on when I appropriated it into my personal vocabulary was the Vorkosigan novels, how the later novels like Brothers in Arms and Memory are that sharp point on the long spear, they have an emotional impact because of the history of the other novels they carry. I consider the Star Trek Reboot movie to be the sharp point. Since I'm trying not to overexplain the vid, I'll leave the rest of the metaphor unspoken.

3. My hat is made of tin.

I will now take questions from the audience.

(Holy cow, it's harder to hear people cry than to hear them laugh.)

So I'm compiling a DVD of our vids to be selling at Vividcon (and possibly on the webs if there is demand) for some cost in the range of $3-$4 US (plus a couple bucks shipping if webs) and I am trying to decide what all should be on the DVD, mostly because I have recently discovered that some of my early work makes me wince.

(My vid post, because I'm not going to link them all individually.)

( lists of vids, cut for length )

Vids of Juls' that Juls is considering not putting on the DVD because old and wince:

• I Want You, Witchblade


• American Tune, Andromeda


• Rain, Farscape

And now, a poll. This is partially to give me a clue how many DVDs we'll need to be making for VVC, partially to demand your advice re vids to disinclude.

(If you are coming from LJ, sign in at the OpenID page to be able to vote.)

vividcon is looking for suggestions for themed vid shows! More specifically, we, your exalted VJs, are looking for suggestions for our themed vid show, The Bechdel Test.

Here's the official blurb:

In 1985 in the comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel gave us this test to evaluate gender equality in a movie: 1) it has to have at least two women in it who 2) talk to each other about 3) something other than a man. This vid show is about the spirit of the Bechdel Test, showcasing vids about two or more women interacting and relating with each other, in ways that don't have anything to do with men. Femslash optional.

This is awesome, right? Girls, girls, girls! We are all about the ladies! We want your mother-daughter, sister-sister, student-teacher, best buds, archenemies, lesbian lovers vids!

We welcome all suggestions! We welcome vids you've seen, vids you've made, vids you are inspired to make just for us! We would really really love to see that, actually, to see people making more vids about women for this show, and for the celebration of women in fandom. What women in your fandom need your loving vidding attention? Would you, could you, premiere a vid with us?

To suggest a vid, go here: http://www.vividcon.com/suggest.cgi

Important dates to know:
--ETA: April 23rd date correction!/ETA: suggestions end! So run go suggest stuff now!
--June 1st: all themed show vids are due, so if you're gonna make one for us, this is when you have to turn it in!

Go! Suggest! Vid! http://www.vividcon.com/suggest.cgi

Your loving VJ sisters,
jmtorres & niqaeli