stunt_muppet

THE SILVER LINING IS BEAUTIFUL AND PERFECT IN EVERY WAY. So soon as I'm done playing it I wish for it to turn into a large stuffed animal or a warm blankie so I can snuggle in it forever.

And all of a sudden I find myself wanting to do nothing but write fic for the King's Quest series despite all my other outstanding ficcish and real life obligations and the fact that nobody would know what it was.

And then I wondered if this is how VR5 fans felt, all vaguely lonely and sad and wanting to blither on about something and make theories that nobody cares about.

And that's sad, because everyone needs to be aware of what fucking amazing people these 90s adventure-game protagonists were. They fucking invented the graphical adventure game, okay, I bet you can't say you did that.

These games are about a family of extraordinary (yet mostly pacifistic) badasses who fight off all the perils of a Fantasy Kitchen Sink world using nothing but their wits, puzzle-solving skills, and ability to pick up any damn random item they want without anyone saying anything about it. And they've saved no less than five kingdoms that way because they are that good.


( Nineties graphical adventures, fuck yeah. )


So yeah, there's a lot going on in these games. They're richly designed, intricate, reward out-of-the-box thinking, and allow you via the royal family generally be fucking amazing at everything. So you should search out some playthroughs and play Silver Lining and write me a bunch of fic about these frankly flawless people.

Oh, and you can die in a bunch of very entertaining ways. Mostly because everything in every game is trying to kill you.

*goes back to watching playthrough*

Of course I'm not pissed off that I'm not at BotCon right now. Not at all. Not in the slightest. I am in no way being eaten up with jealously at the thought of not getting to meet the writers and artists and voice actors of my favorite continuity and not buying any comics or getting any autographs, fuck you California one day I will just cut you off the side of the country and bring you over here so you can stop hogging everything. >:(

In all seriousness, even if it was close I wouldn't have been able to go anyway, probably, what with my baby brother graduating from high school! A bit scary since I do actually remember him being a baby, but, still, super proud of him, and it does warm the heart to watch him walk across the stage after all the hard work he's done.

Also, if I was at BotCon, I wouldn't have gone to see a documentary about the oldest cave paintings ever found, in Chauvet Cave in France, asking questions about the nature of art and humanity and stuff. You wish you were this much of a film snob, oh yeah. (Though it was very beautiful, and you should see it if you get the chance.)

Oh, and another thing I wouldn't get to do if I was at BotCon: Watch a black swallowtail caterpillar molt. OF COURSE THAT'S EXCITING.

( A few bug pictures behind the cut! )
It is probably a tiny bit absurd how excited I am about this caterpillar, but I am so looking forward to watching his development. Or her development, I suppose.


Goodness it's late. To bed with me.

I am seriously considering apping Miko Nakadai. Or at least playing around with her at dear_mun .

Someone please get over here and restrain me until the feeling passes.

Why does reading bad_rpers_suck  make me want to RP shouldn't it be the other way around.

I think I've figured out that if I did want to RP, it'd have to be a character that I like but am not as madly attached to as, say, Jo Grant or Sari or Eva Ushiromiya or the like, because when I do get that attached to someone I want things to go a very particular way for them and get all bent out of shape if they don't and that way lies godmoding and unpleasant feelings all around. Do any of you all do that with your favorite characters? Am I getting to be one of *those* fans?

Also it's a bit sad how much I relish the opportunity to play someone whose personality is mainly defined by being loud and obnoxious. I'm not sure I want to know what that says about me.

*goes back to filing* 

Would anyone be willing to sit for a while and listen to me blather on about the entirety of what I have so far of the Big Huge Crazy TFA Postwar AU, and maybe help me brainstorm a little?

Yeah I know such an exciting prospect. Don't all look so enthused.

Also hey there, TF:Prime fandom seems to have exploded or something. Were I a more cynical person I would insinuate that ( minor minor spoilers for most recent episode of TF Prime ). Also Breakdown is voiced by Jayne and this will never not amuse me. Let's just get the whole Firefly cast in here, then, why not. Yes, including Nathan Fillion. He can be a TFP Sentinel Prime.

Three more fragments before bed:

1. Does having a specific song associated with a pairing I like make me weird and obsessed? Because there's one in particular that's become so linked to this one pairing and even hearing it makes me want to write lots of fic - maybe even songfic if I ever felt like abandoning my dignity.

2. So, That Guy With The Glasses fandom, is there in fact any Phelous fic out there or am I going to have to write it myself? I know it's probably just my pet interest in crappy horror movies but I am growing more and more fond of him the more of his videos I watch. Surely there's some fic to be had in his continuity-proof resurrections and his "Phelous Who" crossovers, yeah?

3. I know I'm supposed to be blogging about interdisciplinary nonfiction and fancy intellectual stuff like that, but really I'd be much more enthusiastic about blogging if I could do endless critical readings of B-horror movies, pop sci-fi, and metafiction, and how they reflect and affect our culture and thought. It's like the honestly intellectual portion of my brain has shrivelled up and died since college. ;__;

Some days I have to keep myself from just saying "fuck it" and posting my lengthy Thoughts On Metropolis/Takashi Miike movies/the adaptation of Lovecraftian mythos into every single pop-SFF universe ever on my nascent blog. This will not help you get a career, dear.

And now bed.

Also I am listening to the Robot Unicorn Attack song over and over again and I don't really know why.[Poll #1676915]

I should write or something, but right now I'm more enthusiastic about sleeping, Someone please make me enthusiastic about writing again; I miss it greatly.

Another quick break in between ENDLESS JOB APPLICATIONS OH MY GOD SOMEONE JUST HIRE ME. Also: Real Life post. One of these days.

So, lo these many years ago in 2008, settiai  had a really cool idea: Since Doctor Who has been running for a good 45 years and has dozens upon dozens of characters, why not try to write 1000 different combinations/pairings of those characters? And thus, whoniverse1000  was born!

And for a while it was pretty great - people wrote pairings that had no other fic and sometimes shouldn't have worked but did, and it was a lot of fun just seeing what people could come up with for these people distributed across space and time to interact with each other. But, around 240 fics (no mean feat) it kind of petered out. And I think that's a shame.

So, I have two ideas here, now that the really heavy holiday/ficathon season is out of the way:

1) Whoniverse 1000 revival ficathon! Gather up all the unclaimed pairings that people have posted thus far and have a fest where people claim, post, claim again, and so on and so forth. In addition to maybe getting a few more stories up there, writers have drifted in and out of Who fandom since whoniverse1000  went up, and there are probably at least a few people who would like it but don't know about it. Advertising!

Quick gauge of interest for a revival ficathon?

2) ...yeah, I kind of want to do a Transformers-verse 1000 fic comm. But I don't know if anyone would want to do it but me. Despite the huge blowups over Ten/Rose and Ten/Martha and whatever, I've found that there are pockets of TF fandom that can be even more divisive about shipping, and I don't want to end up in the middle of a giant wank parade. Of course, I tend not to run with the divisive shipping crowd (you guys are awesome that way, by the way), so I'm not sure how much of a problem it's going to end up being, but it's something to consider.

But, if I did want to do that, would anybody be interested?

This is in no way a plot to get people/myself to write some of the rare pairings I've been wanting to see. Really, fandoms, it's been a whole five months since the Ironhide miniseries ended and you've yet to produce ( SPOILERS for the Ironhide miniseries )

Y'all are lying down on the job I tell you.

If I knew anything about comics canon I'd mod a DC-verse and Marvel-verse 1000 challenge as well, because that seems the most likely out of all of them to make it to 1000. DEADPOOL/EVERYONE.

Oh, and one more announcement: halfamoon  posting is go! Up through the 14th of February, post some fics, art, mixes, meta, or generalized love for your favorite female characters in any fandom. It's a lot of fun and always produces some great fic and introductions to new series and canons, so go check it out and show some love.
 

You know, I never used to get headaches when I used the computer, but now I do. I have done my job-applying and being-a-productive-person for the day; now it is time to read books for my blog. Or bead. I could do that too.

I don't think I should have to give kids candy if they don't even bother to put on a Halloween costume. >:( Kids these days, don't they know all the hard work and dedication we used to make our parents put in for a little free candy? No respect, I'm telling you, none at all.

1. So, the rally on Saturday! My uncle and I drove, so we avoided what I heard were impossible Metro crowds and actually managed to arrive at the rally before it started. Unfortunately we weren't that early, and ended up standing almost ten blocks back from the stage; because Comedy Central had only applied for a permit for 60,000 attendees, they could only set up speakers and Jumbotrons 3 blocks from the stage at the furthest. So we couldn't see or hear anything most of the time, and we ended up cutting and running after "Love Train" finished because, hey, at least we showed up. But the atmosphere was worth it - everyone was friendly and having fun, and people would cheer when other people managed to climb trees to get a better view, and lots of people asked to take pictures of our sign, which was amusing.

Two highlights of the signage: Someone in full old-school Cobra Commander costume holding a sign reading "Fear the Rise of the G(Cobra-Symbol)P", and someone up about a block from me holding up a banner that read "Dean and Castiel have a more profound bond", which made me laugh rather a lot once I figured out what it said- which was unfortunate because there was pretty much no way to explain what I was laughing about to my uncle and his friends.
 
2. So did anyone else get very few trick-or-treaters this year? A lot of my co-workers got very few when they normally get lots, and we had maybe ten groups the whole night when we're usually opening the door all night. And as mentioned above, a lot of them had no costume and didn't bother to even engage in the formality of saying "trick or treat". And I don't think you should get candy if you're going to put in that little effort, okay, if you're going to shake me down for candy you could at least work a little for it.

3. I might possibly have a job! The place I volunteer just got a sales position open, and while I don't know how much I'd get paid for it, it is something, at least, and the shop isn't as crowded in the holiday season as something like Wal-Mart (where I'm pretty sure employees have been trampled to death on Black Friday). This does present the potential problem of me having several doctors' appointments and things scheduled during the next few weeks that might screw up my working schedule, but still. POTENTIAL EMPLOYMENT, YEAH. \o\ /o/

4. Thought about maybe doing some kind of analogue to NaNo this year, wherein I would at least try to write every day, hopefully at least 500 words, and have at least one long fic or three short fics finished by the end of November.

And then I had two whole days where I didn't get anything written, and have been in a funk since the last week or so where I hate my writing and drawing and am convinced that I will never create anything that anyone can enjoy boo hoo woe is me. So there's that plan pretty much shot. Anyone else have days like that, and any advice on how to get over them?

It would be very nice to just freewrite, put down anything that comes into my head. But it doesn't work like that, alas.

5.  Speaking of writing, I have something I'd like to ask you all about concerning beta-ing.

I...haven't been using a beta lately. And that's bad, because I also have a tendency to miss typos and, especially, tense changes. Mostly because, once I've finished writing something, I'm generally so tired of looking at it that I can't see it objectively anyway and don't want to look at it anymore. And while I could certainly take the time to correct typos and mistakes if a beta pointed them out, after I've completed a story and organized everything and gotten the plot all in order I don't want to have to rewrite huge chunks of it.

Besides, while I'm quite open to suggestion and outside ideas while I'm still hashing out a story (which is why, ideally, I'd have co-brainstormers rather than a beta for the finished product, to talk things over and bounce ideas off of, but then it has to be a story I'm comitted to and I have to keep track of everything and also I'm bad at replying to e-mails), but once I've got things set enough to actually write I'm generally pretty attached to the order of events and some turns of phrase in a fic. Having to change a large part of it will throw me off or I'll feel like I'll have to rewrite almost everything to make new sections (suggested by a beta) fit.

I've been thinking about requesting a beta just for grammar, spelling, and mechanical errors, but I feel like that's being really stuck-up, like "oh my stories are perfectly plotted there's nothing you could possibly do to make them better". And it's not true, I know that, a lot of my stories would be vastly improved by thorough crit, I'm just too damn lazy and self-loathing to want it, hurr. But even having a SPAG beta is better than having no beta, right?

Uuugh, writing is hard you guys. :( And there are so many things I'm almost done with but the few unwritten sections are driving me up the wall. Not the best position when you're already in a why-do-I-bother mood.

6. To make things worse I've been thinking of trying to do something more with that Sari/Bee/Twins fic, but every time I try to think of a direction for it to go it starts becoming all ~serious business~ and you really can't have that when you're writing about robot puberty. I mean, either one of the twins blabs to Sentinel about their being a techno-organic among the Autobots and he wants to know why Optimus has been hiding this from him and there's ~drama~ or Sari somehow manages to damage her body why trying to figure out what exactly it does and there's ~angst~ and idek, I just wanted to write crackfic, dammit, why can't I do that. D:

7. Also Amazon apparently cancelled my order for the Almanac Volume 2 because I forgot to renew it, so now I'll probably never get my hands on it unless I'm willing to fork over $300 on the secondary market. Why exactly is this thing so hard to get a hold of?

Feh, I should quit whining and get off the computer, given that this window has been open since about 2 p.m. Don't want to ruin my eyes. Sorry for being a terrible commenter and all.

You all make such unreasonable demands of me, you know.

But first, some chitchat:

1. My uncle and I are carrying a sign to the Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear tomorrow; somewhat predictably, ours reads "this is a sign", but let me tell you it was extremely tempting to make my own sign reading "+5 to SAN Check".

Because, you see, it's the Rally to Restore Sanity. And in the pen-and-paper RPG Call of Cthulu, whenever you glimpse the Horrible Elder Things or their constructs, you lose Sanity, abbreviated as SAN. And to determine how much Sanity you've lost at any given encounter, you make a SAN Check.

So, obviously, a +5 bonus to your SAN roll would help you...drumroll...restore sanity!

I think you can see why I could not do this. With my luck out of the 60,000+ people at the Rally there'd be maybe one who knew enough about Call of Cthulu to get it, and they'd be standing on the other side of the Mall from me, and my joke would be totally wasted. Also I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with being that much of a geek in public and possibly on national TV.

2. I have for the first time eaten a delicious new fruit! My uncle came in yesterday and very kindly took me to dinner, and we went to this Chinese restaurant we like, where they had a dish of shrimp complemented by a fruit called the longan, a relative of the lychee. Like the lychee it's small with tender pale flesh, but it's almost sugary-sweet and bursts into juice when you bite into it. The next time I drive by my local Asian market, I'm going to keep an eye out for it, and if you see any raw in your local markets (it looks like a tan lychee fruit) I highly recommend giving it a try.

3. Ellen DeGeneres dresses up as Snooki's Pouf for Halloween. STOP BEING AMAZING ELLEN I CAN'T HANDLE IT.

4. Paul the Octopus, who successfully predicted the outcome of every World Cup game, has died. Spokespersons for the aquarium where he lived have proposed burying him on the aquarium grounds with a modest permanent shrine. May the aquarium bubbles rise to meet you, Paul. *removes hat*

5. A meme that pretty much everyone and their mum has done by this point:

1. Comment in this post with a pairing, a character, or theory.
2. I shall write you back a paragraph explaining what I think about it (good, bad, indifferent) and why.
3. Repost in your own journal if you want.

Fandoms: TF Animated, Beast Wars, and G1; Doctor Who Doctors 1-5 and 9-11; Umineko no Naku Koro Ni (anime only; haven't read enough of the VNs to be comfortable answering questions yet); Star Trek Reboot; Shadow Raiders; ReBoot; NCIS; Bones; Toy Story. You know, stuff.

6. spacehussy  tagged me for this other writing meme, and let me tell you it takes so very long to compare reading stats over four different sites. My life; so hard.

( snip snip )

Past my bedtime; rally to get to tomorrow. Good night, flist.

So I should probably do an intro post that doesn't involve a weird fic fragment, right?

My name is Muppet and this is my journal. :D I'm a recent college grad with an English degree that I'm not currently making much use of, as well as a concentration in Biology that I'm not using either. At the moment I'm spamming my city with resumes and making sad eyes at people in the hopes that they'll hire me, as well as volunteering for a nonprofit fair-trade goods shop in my area. Which handily leaves me lots of time to waste on the internet! Except for when it doesn't.

This journal is primarily fannish at the moment, but includes a fair amount of Real Life stuff too, including lots of talk about the music and movies I listen to/watch day-to-day, reports on the job search, and occasional generalized Thoughts on everything from biology to art theory to Serious Business topics like race and gender. My entries tend to be quite long and sprawling, though I cut if stuff gets really excessive. Heads-up, there.

Mostly what I talk about is writing; in fact I talk about writing a great deal more than I actually write, and since I have a whole lot of fic ideas, and since talking about them helps me hash them out and get them to a place where I might actually be able to write them down, a great deal of my entries will at least in part be me rambling about things I want to or am planning to write. I love talking about the writing process and working over my ideas with other people, but also just thinking out loud helps. A great deal of what I talk about in here never actually gets written, but I am trying to change that. Also I am very prone to posting memes and then never finishing them, or signing up for ficathons, not working on them, and then freaking out and swearing a lot as the deadline approaches.

I also draw, though not very well and not very quickly. I occasionally attempt fanart, but most of what I've been drawing lately has been humanization fanart, especially genderswapped humanization fanart. I will cut and label it as such whenever I post it, of course, so it'll be easy to avoid when it does come up. I make attempts at being a photographer (mostly of insects; click the picspam tag to see them) and also make bead jewelry in my spare time which I post photos of here. I'm working on getting at Etsy shop set up for my beadwork, so BUY MY STUFF PLEASE I NEED MONIES. Ahem.

So far as fandoms go, at the moment Transformers and Doctor Who(/Sarah Jane Adventures) are my two most active fannish sandboxes; I sort of drifted out of Doctor Who fandom after Series 4 ended but am worring my way back in and trying to finish up my unfinished fic (and write the ones that I've been meaning to). As far as Transformers goes, TFA was my first canon and still the one I'm most attached to/write the most fic for; Beast Wars has the advantage of being by Mainframe which is one of my favorite studios ever; and I'm still poking around the G1 series a bit but am enjoying it greatly as well. While I've got a lot of love for the Decepticons (of any series) most of my fic-writing energies tend to go to the Autobots, and in particular I could write fic about Sari Sumdac pretty much all day because I adore her something fierce. :D Also I tend to love most characters in each show, and will squee about any and all of them; while I do have some that I especially love, there really aren't any that I actively dislike.

In Doctor Who fandom I'm most active on the Classic Who side of things, with Three and Two being my favorite Doctors and One and Four coming in close seconds. I do watch and enjoy New Who, of course, and while I had some issues with Season 5 I am mostly quite enamored of Eleven and Amy and Rory and River, but they're not who I write most of my fic about. I feel like there's already plenty of great writers writing about them, you know? I like to give the characters who don't get as much fic some love. As with Transformers, there are very few characters I actually dislike and I tend to love everybody, even the Companions everyone hates (I'm an Adric fan, just putting that out there). As far as actual favorite companions, Liz, Jo, Ben, Polly, Jamie, and the Brigadier rank highly on the list, but, like I said, loving everybody. :D 

Of note: I try to avoid bashing on my journal, and that includes in the comments. Loving mockery and poking fun are okay; mean-spirited character-bashing is not.

I ship het, I slash, I femslash, I write and read gen, I love OT3s and OT4s and Team Orgies Lovefests and fic that doesn't fit any of those descriptions. The fic I write tends to be het, but it's not really a reflection on my shipping proclivities, as I tend to ship everyone in a series with everyone else and see no inherent contradiction in this.

Aside from my two big fandoms, I tend to collect fandoms (at least lurking fandoms) likea magpie and stick around them for ages even if I'm not actvely doing anything in them. I was in the CSI and Law & Order fandoms for quite some time and I still lurk around on the peripheries/watch the shows and talk about them on occasion; I'm a bit more fannishly into NCIS and Bones but don't read much fic for them. I mostly lurk in the Star Trek Reboot fandom but still like meta-ing about it on occasion or squeeing over the characters and the directions that fandom takes them in. I am slowly edging my way into the fandoms for Umineko no Naku Koro Ni, Baccano!, and Mainframe's other shows, ReBoot and Shadow Raiders/War Planets, which is a thing of amazement and beauty that everyone should watch, and I will probably have more to witter on about my other fandoms (all zillion of them) when it is not coming up on 2 a.m.

Oh, and I tend to post at 2 a.m.. It happens rather more often than I'd like.

So that was my extremely long and rambly intro post. So, tell me something about you! I mean, most of you have intro posts of your own, but even if you do already, tell me something that's not on there. TALK AMONGST YOURSELVES. *waves hands magnanimously*

First off, and I'm assuming this wouldn't be a problem anyway but I just want to cover my bases:

Please do not link to my posts, locked or unlocked, on Facebook or Twitter. My LJ and my Facebook/Real Life are kept separate for a reason, and I'd prefer to keep them that way. I have disabled this feature on my own journal. and will never intentionally crosspost any content from your journals.

So okay, that's over with.

So you may have overheard that I've been having a rather hard time getting my fangirl mitts on the two bits of TF merch that I really, really want, namely the Arcee figurine and the AllSpark Almanac Vol. 2. Specifically, I couldn't seem to find them anywhere.

So I decided that, one morning, I was just going to the local Toys R' Us and ask them to hold an Arcee figurine for me when it came in. You can do that, right? Especially since it's a Toys R' Us exclusive.

Except it turns out that Arcee is specifically sold to be rare, with only one or two of her in each new shipment of her Animated toy wave - and there's only one small shipment at a time, since most of the Transformers section of my local Toys R' Us is taken up with Bayverse toys, so the odds of her showing up are already slim. And because it's listed in the store catalog as just "Animated Deluxe-Class Figurine" - the specific figurine isn't listed, so there's no way for them to order it individually or check its stock status.

Oh, and because Arcee is such a rare figurine, area collectors tend to arrive before opening time when the pallets first come in and buy her toy on the spot on the rare occasions she's in the order, so she rarely ever even gets to the store shelves. And a lot of the people who buy that way are toy scalpers, which explains why all the Arcee figurines I can find on Amazon are double or more the retail price.

So unless I want to be one of those people who stalks the toy trucks at six in the morning, no Arcee for me. And no, I'm not ordering the thirty-five dollar ones off of eBay or Amazon. Because that would be letting the reselling jerks win. *stubborn face*

So I decided, screw it, I'll get the Almanac instead, surely that'll be easier to find. But then I thought that our Local Comic Shop had closed, and that was supposed to be the main venue for distribution of this thing. So, checked Barnes and Noble, since they had a comic book section and it usually carries a handful of TF comics, but not only did they not have it, none of the B&N in my entire area had even a single copy. So once again, no way to order it.

Driving around with J and M yesterday, and it turns out that Local Comic Shop has indeed not closed! It's merely moved from the mall it used to be in to the shopping center across the street! So, today, I decided to wander on over there and check to see if they had it. Naturally, not only did they not have it, but there seemed to be no record of it ever even being in stock.

The girl at the counter was very nice, however, and offered to look up the Almanac to see if there was any possibility of ordering it, which meant that we ended up on Amazon. And while there was apparently one copy left that was still at the retail price, all the other copies, new and used? Were upwards of two hundred fucking dollars.

I would like to re-emphasize this. TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS. For a comic book (effectively) that came out maybe two months ago and, so far as I can tell, isn't even out of print. What exact kind of craziness is going down here.

So, yeah, I just bucked up and ordered it on Amazon, even if that means I won't get the book until almost October. At least I got to pay retail for it instead of two hundred dollars.

It's so strange, though. It's like if you don't want to buy a Bayverse toy, you're shit out of luck unless you're ready to jump through a whole bunch of hoops. I'm trying to give you my money, Hasbro. Making it more difficult for me to do so seems like kind of an assbackwards business plan.

So. Ahem. I just had to get the complaining out of my system. At least the Clerk Lady also pointed me to the Wonder Woman Blackest Night event series, which is only three brief books long and looks amazing, so, it's not all bad at all. Freaking Bayverse.

---

Mostly unrelated point: How much would you all judge me if I used a Nightwish lyric as a fic title?

I'm normally very bad at titles; if I don't cop out and use a song or a line of poetry, my titles tend to be very descriptive and flat, often only one word. So, more and more I've been turning to songs, flicking through my playlist until something catches my fancy.

Unfortunately, the one lyric I've decided might be a little bit perfect for the Optimus/Blackarachnia springkink  fic is "Bring Me Home (Or Leave Me Be)"; I feel like it kind of gets the mood and the themes of conflict, trust, and rejection in there. But it's also from a Nightwish song. Specifically, it's from "Ghost Love Score", which means my fic is going to be irrevocably connected to various Epic Roll cracks. Not a great mental association.

Of course, there are times when I have the opposite problem - i.e. I have a title and one or two lines but no content - but that doesn't happen nearly as often as the No Title problem. Thus far there's only two free-floating titles I've got, one for the Prime/Primal springkink  fic ("Apres-mois, la Deluge", because if I can't have a song lyric I will have a pretentious-sounding quote in a language I don't know that I've probably misspelled) and one for that AU I keep meaning to write where Sari never meets the Autobots and "grows up" as a not-quite-normal human girl until unusual things start happening around puberty ("The Dead-Leaf Hands on the Radium Clock", a lyric from a B-52s song, and I actually have only two sentences of that fic besides the title).

So, flist that writes, how do you come up with titles? If you use lyrics, how do you choose which ones to use, and how do you get over the creeping feeling of being judged over your musical tastes? If you eschew lyrics, how do you know when a title's just right?

--

UGH WHY IS IT 2 AM AGAIN. Good night, you guys. I'm sorry I whined at you for like an hour.