Off the prompt "cuddles."

So I try, generally, to accept the idea that once I put things on the internet, they are on the internet and free to be made merry with by one and all. Therefore, it is my opinion that you do not REQUIRE my permission to:

--remix my work
--podfic my work
--make vids of my fanfic
--show my vids in a vidshow
--link my work, to anyone you reasonably think would appreciate it
--write fanfic of my fanfic
--draw fanart for my fanfic
--or any other permutation of fannish inspiration you can think of.

But if you want my permission, you have it. Also, if I've managed to lock something you wanted to share, poke me about it, that's generally accidental, I will usually unlock.

I would like to hear about if you are using or remixing or etcing my work! That is pretty exciting for me. Also, I would like to be credited (except on those rare occasions--I can think of two--where I have posted work with the specific request *not* to be associated with it).

See also: my braintwin's thoughts on this matter.

So anyway: you don't have to ask to play in my sandbox, but the answer's always yes.

So niqaeli and I found that two songs, which we had learned from vids, helped us greatly in not completely losing our minds during the third season of Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Whenever we found ourselves compelled to ask, "Why is there a train crossing on the penis balcony" or other similar questions, we determined that the answer was A Metaphor Is a Glorious Thing.

Whenever her efforts to set Akio on fire with her mind seemed inadequate, or there were suddenly a surplus of little red convertibles, or, randomly, a carrot coming out of Touga's head, it cheered us greatly to sing, Too Many Dicks On the Dance Floor! (too many dicks!)

In related news, it turns out what I thought was my season 3 Utena pack is actually an entire series pack. So my season 1 + movie and season 2 packs are superfluous. Would anyone be interested in buying them for like, I dunno, $5 a season + shipping? They're the old versions, not the new remaster versions, but they still go for like $40 and they're pretty bright and shiny (it is not like Utena is a monochromatic or dull show). ETA: CLAIMED.

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 would clearly be more interesting if I didn't sleep in like, eighteen hour stretches.

(Oh, fine. I only actually slept about eight hours from when I passed out last night, but I totally slept seventeen hours the night/morning/afternoon/evening before to get me out of whack so that I'm only remembering to turn my phone back on at three in the afternoon after killing it outright when the alarm went off at nine at the morning.)

---

I think I've read all the Killjoys fic I can (I want to read fic about the Killjoys not about My Chemical Romance, and at this point I am a little hmmph at the usage of "Grace" instead of "Sunshine," and I realize the primary Killjoys fandom is bandom and I'm a lonely grinch out here and such is life), which is sad, because my brain doesn't want to cycle off it that fast.

I am toying with shooting a Killjoys short. I mean, we have desert and hilarious shades of hair (my streak is lime green at the moment, and niqaeli doesn't see how her checkerboard bun is that interesting but she talks about dyeing it turquoise), we could totally be a chick band/gang of the Danger Days 'verse. echan, would you be up for driving out all the way from Battery City on your totally appropriately decorated motorcycle to participate in a weekend shoot if I get something organized? And like, written? (Because surrealism is all well and good but frankly it can't be as randomly spontaneous as it looks to get done on a shooting schedule.)

My Wicked Witch of the East stockings would have to make an appearance. I'm trying to figure out what I would wear with them to show them off because most of my skirts would be impractical for kicking ass.

Part of me thinks it would be hilariously awesome to write and record an original song pastiching (it's verbable if I say so, spell check, take the fucking gerund) the Danger Days style (for one thing, it would make it totally original work, not original video to a borrowed song, and, among other things, that would make it useable for portfolio as vids are not--echan, I have also been having that problem lately). Part of me recognizes that while I have experience with film production, I don't actually have any experience with song-writing or producing. Which: goddamnit, but it's a neat idea. Does anyone want to chime in and be a co-conspirator?

PS echan EVEN ASIDE FROM MY HILARIOUS FANNISH DORKERY YOU SHOULD CALL ME BACK ILU

Nnng. I can't decide if I'm being ridiculous in a doable way or in a unsupportable way. I priced HD camera rentals for a weekend and also looked into the local Ikea's last chance deals for white, simple line furniture to stand in for BL/ind's that we could realistically smash. And I don't even... this concept is barely a concept right now, I have so far talked to ONE person who would be on cast and maybe crew, and I don't even know if I should be storyboarding for a song off the album or thinking about original stuff.

Captain Kirk hitting on Yeoman Ayn Rand.

So niq has this ongoing plotbunny about Ezar's empress, Yuri's sister, named Griselda for our convenience, and the horribleness of her life and times under Yuri's rule, and how she gave Ezar-Piotr-Xav et al the palace during the civil war.

Having explored her characterization thus far, we then posited what would have happened if she had not died in childbirth with Serg but had lived to see him go mad. Answer: she would have killed him, as soon as Gregor was born healthy, her own damn self because if it was her they could call it Yuri Redux and not start a civil war.

And then the war party would have had the legs cut out from under it not having Serg as a figurehead nor Ezar using it to kill them all, and so when Aral (who would still have been on punishment duty at Sergyar since the Komarran conquest fail predates Griselda killing Serg) deals with the mutiny he then decides to fucking open diplomatic relations, damn the war party, full speed ahead, and sends Captain Naismith to the Escobarans with messages of peace and offers of trade.

The Betan Astronomical Survey? Totally trains for this eventuality. There is a non-trivial chance of a blind wormhole jump landing you in previously charted territories. Diplomacy IS part of Cordelia's training and mission. And when the Escobarans hear the Butcher of Komarr is on the other side and Cordelia keeps going "but he's really a decent fellow!" she gets stuck with that diplomatic duty longterm because nooooo one else wants to deal with him.

And Ges (introduced as "my creepy ex" instead of "And now, a rapist!") will totally turn "diplomatic relations" into obscene slang. And Cordelia's anthropological study of Rules of Barrayaran society include a whole subset of "and this is how it works with Ges," because he is totally different from everyone else. And Cordelia's considered opinion of him is that he badly needs some therapy. And Aral is like "Do you think if we shipped him off to Beta, they'd take him?"

I WANT HER TO WRITE THIS FOR ME. MY CURRENT THREAT IS THAT I WILL FINISH WRITING VORKOSIGAN 60 AND HOLD IT HOSTAGE UNTIL SHE WRITES THIS FOR ME. She has laughed and laughed at the idea that I could write a novel-length story and not immediately started soliciting feedback from everyone I know. In fact she's suggested that she will make me wait on this story just to see how long I COULD wait. WHEN SHE COULD JUST WRITE ME A STORY BECAUSE IT IS AWESOME AND SHE'S SUPPOSED TO LOVE ME. When I explode of impatience I will murder her in her sleep.

There's a reason I have a braintwin. Apparently it is for CRACK.

So I watched Inception months ago and it was interesting and whatever and I read fic as it was recommended on my droll and whatever but I was not hugely inspired (other than the OH MY GOD WHAT horribly straight Dom/Mal vid--so come with me up to the balcony and we'll fall like paper planes/in the morning the papers will say 'lovers fly away' WTF IS THAT EVEN besides painful, so very painful, why couldn't I have awesome vid ideas like Like a Boss? I fucking love that vid).

Then this week I went to see it with niqaeli who had not seen it prior (we were waiting for, like, two months for it to hit the dollar theatre, and boggling at the wait) and after discussing it with her SUDDENLY MY BRAIN IS FULL OF CRACK BUNNIES.

"Hi," said Arthur when Ariadne opened her hotel door. He then launched into: "So Dom is an asshole who's apparently forgotten the meaning or maybe just the ethical necessity of full disclosure in our line of work."

"Yeah, I'd caught that," Ariadne said. The job was over, though, so what Dom hadn't told them couldn't hurt them now, right? "Was there something in particular you wanted to vent about that he forgot to tell you?"

"No," said Arthur. "That he forgot to tell you. See, he just confessed that he might have forgotten to mention the pon farr to you."

Ariadne stared at him. "The what?" she said flatly.

"Uh," said Arthur. "You're not familiar with Star Trek...?"

"Oh, I am," said Ariadne. "Ergo me wanting to know, pon farr has what to do with my life?"

Because, see, ( discussion of the conceit of the movie; I wouldn't think it's spoilery but wth do I know )

PS fandom why are you not all over the telepathy thing? I know the movie never mentions ESP but how else do you explain it? Has then been addressed somewhere I didn't see because I've mostly been reading stress baking AUs?

Also the telepathy issue brings up ( plot spoilers )

Then there's the shit niq has me cooking up about wtf ways to use Eames's forging abilities. She suggested in aid of someone's furry fantasy and I replied that no, wingfic was in order--
niq: Are they SPARKLY?
me: Not sparkly enough, no, because Eames has done FAR TOO MUCH RESEARCH on realistic wings--

(side note: he absolutely did vast, personal research for the blonde and is INSULTED when Arthur asks which one she's a copy of, she's a work of ART, not plagiarism, though Eames will be happy to give you references of inspiration for any body part that interests you)

At some point in the conversation niq objected to the wing fantasy belonging to Arthur because she feels fandom has made much of little with that pairing and fucked up what they had (where is the bitchy snark? and no one understands the correct usage of "darling" in the British parlance, apparently) so I said:

me: So Eames has done so much research on wings for Saito's fantasy--
niq: AHAHAHAH OMG he wants wings AND tentacles!
me: --THAT HE HAS TWO HYPERREALISTIC PROBLEMS--
niq: yes? (humoring the crazy lady)
me: 1) he smells like sea gull and 2) he's done enough research into weight-to-wingspan ratios that he can't convince himself, dream or no, that he can fly.

I am transcribing from memory of spoken conversation, not copy/pasting from IM, so I have probably lost some of the hilarity.

AND THEN THERE WAS THE OTHER ONE ABOUT WHAT DOM WANTS EAMES TO FORGE--( Read more... )

Seriously OMG I am probably never going to write any of this as actual story but it makes me so happy to have floating around in my head and it is all niqaeli's fault. I less-than-three her so.

Tonight we heard a strange squeaking noise, which, when investigated, proved to be a ball of grey fluff with whom BratMonster kitten was playing through the window. Vaguely tribble-ish in size, adorability, trill, and furriness, we determined it was a kitten really too young to be on its own and lured it to us with a steady stream of inane babble (after we figured out that sitting quietly was only freaking it out) and wet food. It is currently locked in the downstairs bathroom of conhq, as it was too late to canvas the neighborhood asking if anyone had lost their kitten. Though we suspect it may be abandoned as upon picking it up and feeling it, we found it was an underfed scrap of a thing with a knobby, knobby spine. It puts me in mind of Little Miss when we first got her, only tinier and therefore exponentially more deadly cute--at a year and a half old, Little Miss was barely over four pounds and her fluffy tail was as big as her body. (Little Miss has since been fed adequately and is something like twelve-ish pounds, and may no longer accurately be called Little, though what has accuracy to do with how I address my cats?) We estimate the grey fluffball to be 3-4 months old and possibly its weight should be measured in ounces.

I had an episode of... I don't even know. niqaeli suggests it tromped on my mommy buttons. In a fit of insanity I txted the roomie to ask what he thought of having three cats; I later retracted that. In any case I managed to hand the kitten off to other people, leave the vicinity, and slowly pry myself away from the idea of taking it home to be mine mine mine, during which period I repeatedly announced I was being very reasonable about this whole thing and burst into tears every five seconds.

List of Things Juls is not allowed to review while recovering from kitten:
Memory
Cetaganda
A Civil Campaign
that episode of Nero Wolfe where the dog follows Archie home
any episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation featuring any incarnation of Spot
Red Dwarf
the icanhazcheezburger feed on my droll
Glass Houses (see icon)
eta: small humans being adorable--I better not read any of thefourthvine's Earthling entries/eta

...and if I continue, this rapidly reaches Skippy length.

Curiously, the fantasy genre obligatory talking cat archetype doesn't nail this the same way, but I am still wary of removing Red Dwarf from that list.

I feel a little better now but I think I will be falling down to sleep at conhq as the whole thing has left me too exhausted to drive.

At some later point when we've made sure no one in the neighborhood is looking for the little thing, I will probably post a link to adorable pictures in niqaeli's journal as we seek to find it a home that is not mine (or hers, but mostly not mine, as that seems to be where the emotional risk lies).

The waitress at Waffle House informs me tomorrow is another day and it will get better. Also I think she may have threatened to beat up my man (I was not very articulate about why I was crying).

*clears throat* Attention, persons interested in getting niqaeli a birthday present:

Her birthday is um, in just a couple of days (I had been meaning to get on this sooner, sorry, I'm a loser). So some of you may have already acquired birthday presents for her. But I had this thought! This brilliant plan I've been meaning to implement! Whereby some number of us get together and buy her a tattoo. She has a long list of ink she is interested in but I believe the first one she wants to get is a memorial to Tiggy.

(I would filter this entry from her but um, she's my braintwin, I already told her, and even if I hadn't done, it would be hard to keep it for her when we go see tattoo artists to look at portfolios and get quotes.)

So! Who's interested in chipping in? Is fine if you're not sure how much, I can get in touch when we actually have a quote.

I cosplayed Ruby at Club Vivid and luminosity commented that I was playing the dead femme fatale. I had to headtilt and remember that for the rest of fandom, yes, she is dead. But not for me, because I live in another universe as far as Supernatural is concerned.

I happened to mention this niqaeli, whose response was that, well, okay, the host body's kind of a walking corpse, but Ruby isn't dead in any meaningful way, and how do we dissect the deadness of demontude. We were stopped at a red light so I let go of the wheel and took her hands and said, "No really, honey, she was stabbed with the demon-killing knife. As far as canon and most of fandom are concerned, she's really, really dead." And niq started cracking up because she had completely forgotten, as she also lives in another universe with regards to Supernatural, although hers involves the phrase "Ruby, the archangel" and Gabriel being an asshole for kicks.

In case you were wondering about Olga, it's not like I didn't specifically go looking for all the blood and gore and demon-shooting and demon-stabbing and somehow I left out that part of the season 4 finale, so I think it's safe to say she's not dead either.

The funny thing is that there are shows for which fandom has declared Didn't Happen (see also: Richie Ryan, Alex Krycek, and Daniel Jackson, where the power of their denial combined with lack of regular work for a scifi-turned-serious actor combined to MAKE IT CANONICAL), but as far as we can tell, there isn't any organized/widespread denial about Ruby. So hey. Put your hands up if Ruby lives on in your hearts, regardless of what may or may not have happened on the show.

I have told niqaeli to remind me later that Dean wearing a bra bandanna was an idea that I had while intoxicated and is not to be used in the final story.

I made a vid. It premiered at Vividcon tonight.

Title: The Boy King
Vidder: jmtorres (with an assist from niqaeli)
Fandom: Supernatural
Song: Sheep Marketing Ploy by Tom Smith
Warnings: Dude, it's Supernatural. Specific warnings here.
Summary: Sam Winchester, the Death Sheep from Hell.

Download link (please right-click/save-as): The Boy King. (27MB avi) (Link updated 18 April 2019)

( embedded on youtube )

Last night (what, three weeks after the fact?) I figured out how to make niq's cut of the vid work marvelously. It would have required changing more of the verse even than she did.

I am currently gnawing on a subjective reality problem. It's actually a dual subjective reality problem with elements informed by a cultural narrative of heteronormative sexism, which makes it difficult to bring up without sounding accusatory in the face of genuinely good intentions. Also I am arguably not awake enough yet to be coherent.

So, the source still a sight unseen, we (niqaeli and I) have determined what our vid, song and concept is for Vividcon premieres (that's due in two weeks and we haven't started on yet). And I check my email and I'm off the waiting list.

Hahaha. Ahem.

We are taking bets that we close first half this year.

ETA:

niq: ...are we making a meta vid again? I think we are.
juls: CRAP. Fuck it *G*
niq: It's a hilarious meta vid!

ETA2: YOU GUISE. I HAVE A CONCEPT SKETCH. WHAT.

ETA3: SERIOUSLY WHY AM I DRAWING AN 11"x14" SKETCH OF SOMETHING THAT'S GOING TO GET LIKE, 90x90 PIXELS, TOPS?

Just a quick reminder for the forgetful--today is Rickroll Day, Gafiation Day, April Fool's, when it's at home. So don't take anything you see today too seriously and remember that by the communicative law of identity, niqaeli and ysobel are the same person.

niqaeli wrote an entry about the blood, sweat and tears we put into the vid Long Spear. I helped.

(Long Spear was the Trek vid. Yeah.)

It is sort of heartening that when I start writing down a happy thought a day in the happy journal, things start pouring out and suddenly I'm writing down four happy thoughts as fast as I can before I have to run back to work.

In other news, I got a ramekin of cheesecake and left it on the counter instead of taking it home with me. It, it will go to waste now, because omg I'm not driving back down to the other end of town. *sadness*

I keep poking at this one particular story in my head and it's possible that if I keep at it, the sex scene will congeal into something I can actually elide instead of farming out to niqaeli to write for me. Relatedly, I think niqaeli and I should credit all episodes of xfp Lennon & McCartney style. She can even be Lennon! I'm good with this.

Last night I wanted to watch the (? I'm trying to remember if there was ever another) Christmas episode of X-Files with niq, How the Ghosts Stole Christmas. In finding which season it was in, I happened to notice the high volume of total crack episodes in season 6:

--Drive, which opened with a faux news broadcast of a high-speed chase realistic enough to confuse and frustrate wee Juls for several minutes
--Triangle, in which every act is comprised of about three long shots, tops
--Dreamland I & II, in which Mulder is bodyswapped with an Area 51 suit, but it's all retconned, except for the waterbed
--How the Ghosts Stole Christmas, in which the word "paramasturbatory" is used twice, among other hilarious tidbits
--Tithonus, in which Clyde Bruckman's prediction that Scully will never die comes to pass
--Monday, aka Groundhog's Day
--Arcadia, in which Mulder and Scully go undercover as the Petries
--The Unnatural, in which aliens came to Earth to break into pro baseball
--Three of a Kind, the Las Vegas episode, featuring the abuse of squibs
--Field Trip, in which Mulder and Scully do shrooms.

It's not that X-Files never did crack before (Jose Chung's From Outer Space, Small Potatoes, Bad Blood, the aforementioned Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose), but I rather feel that season six had a very high crack quotient. Curiously, season 7 seems to have less crack, though, still, more than the early once-a-season break-outs--it wasn't a long-term commitment to crack, I guess? In any case, suddenly I understand much better why some people draw the line on their acceptable canon at season 5? My own line is at season 7, cast changes shook up my show more than I could stand more than crack did. niq says this prefigured my fifth-wave fannishness.

Dude, screw the mytharc, niqaeli and I should just watch the crack episodes. It. It would be a very different experience.

niqaeli loves me very much, in the totally every day way. Grocery store trips and Supernatural DVDs, I tell you. What more could a girl want of a braintwin?

Everyone, go tell niqaeli she's awesome.

The official description of the Bechdel show niqaeli and I put together for vividcon is:

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.

A fairly dry definition of the Bechdel Test, in case anyone didn't know; "femslash optional" was our wry comment on what we thought most vids-that-passed-Bechdel would be about. We were thrillingly shocked to find that vidders had found and shown and celebrated female characters having an incredible range of relationships and conversations. This is a show full of vids about: friendship, family, sisterhood, mothers and daughters, adopting each other, finding your place in the world, making your place in the world, being part of something bigger than yourself, death and grief, history, identity, societal roles and how to break out of them and the extent to which that's possible--and also, kicking ass, taking names, robots, cheerleading, rocking out, and hot lesbian sex.

( the playlist )

( discussion questions )

1. I finished watching Enterprise!

2. Alas, my love affair with the trashy holonovel is not over. I'm reading fic. None of it is what I'd call good fic, which is why I'm leaning heavily on comedy--a well-formatted comedy can live without a plot and with mangled characterizations, whereas drama with the same flaws make me stab the back button.

But my actual second comment was a related issue to the bad fic: I keep trying to figure out what woman on Enterprise Archer might be talking to who would be considered blonde (not T'Pol, surely not Hoshi), only to realize he's talking to Trip. You guys! Blonde with an e, girl!Trip. Blond without an e, boy!Trip. Continually referring to characters by their hair color instead of their name, so last decade.

niqaeli and I discussed it and girl!Trip is awesome and I want actual fic about her (as opposed to whoops, stop calling boy!Trip the blonde mmmkay?). She's totally queer. Like, not completely lesbian, about the same ratio of hitting on alien women and bonding in highly suspect ways with Archer and Reed as the next Trip--but she is queer, and self-aware about it, which means she totally calls Reed on his shit, Reed being the least self-aware queer in the history of Starfleet. Also, she's about ten times less ass-hatty about the one-night stand with T'Pol. In my head her name is still Trip which means she's probably actually also still Charles Tucker III because her father so desperately wanted a son to carry on the line that he gave his daughter massive issues to carry around. Fun times! Is there any chance this story has actually been written? Is there any chance it's any good?

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.)

Does anyone know anything about casting faces and creating prosthetic appliances? My experience: one undergraduate make-up class, in which we used liquid latex and kleenex to make scars.

My current goal: making custom Vulcan ears for niqaeli. Also pointy eyebrows for the both of us (but I am less concerned about that).

Most of my questions have to do with materials. Like, my textbook here says use alginate to do the cast of the face. echan claims we could do it with papier maché, though I am thinking I don't want to try to get newsprint strips fine enough to deal with the ear. So, alginate. (My book is all about the accu-cast brand; I admit I am looking at mold gel purely for local availability.) Do I want quick set (like, 3 minutes) or slow set (like, 8 or 9 minutes)? I mean, as a beginner at this, will I actually get the stuff on before it sets in three minutes? Or if I get the slow set will I end up going "Hold still, it's almost set... almost..." for like, five minutes?

So then, making the positive plaster cast off the alginate face ear mold (ps: I am thinking I will be casting just her ears since that is all I need to make appliances for. Is there any compelling reason to do a full face cast?). Materials for the plaster cast--is there any reason I need to be using hydro super stone pro stuff, vs plaster of paris I could pick up at Joann's?

Once I clay model the pointy ears and make a negative plaster cast of that, I am then a little waffly about what to make the actual appliances out of. Like, I'm reading about painting layers of liquid latex into the mold which would make an ear that conforms externally to what I sculpted but which would not be perfectly molded to the top of her ear. It would be... hollow, I guess? I get that you can't fill up the whole closed mold (inclusive of the positive cast of the ear) with liquid latex, that that won't set because liquid latex needs air to set? That if I want to do something that matches up perfectly to her ear, I'm looking at foaming materials--foam latex, poly-urethane foam, silicone foam, foam gelatin. Any recs re: my low experience level and affordability of materials? Or is a foam appliance overkill for this--should I just make the hollow latex appliance?

( current materials list for niq's approval )

Hey, all, this is your gentle reminder that there's a mere two days left to suggest vids for Vividcon themed shows. Whether you're going to vividcon or not, you should consider throwing your vids, your best friend's vids, your favorite vids ever into the ring.

Here at the Bechdel Show, I am especially excited to hear your suggestions. I also totally want your premiering vids if you are so inclined, but even just your favorite vid ever about a couple of gal-pals is made of win.

Suggest at the form!! Leave me a comment! Email me at juliette dot torres at gmail dot com. You have the power to make our show awesome.

You know, I had the unholy suspicion that the vividcon deadline was going to be great for my word count. 1879 words. Spoilers through K&R, I suppose (not the finale, hadn't seen it yet, watching it... now); inspired by this bunny of niqaeli's *cries*, Matt and Jordan. Also on AO3.

That only cost me about four and a half hours!

( Read more... )