stunt_muppet

Apparently yesterday (or, technically, the day before that) was lurker amnesty day! Since I did not know that, I will hold it today on my journal instead. I'm contrary that way.

Have you read me but never commented? Do you surf by occasionally? Here for the fic, or the general snark and commentary and whinging? Say hello! You are under no obligation to ever comment or delurk again, but here's a chance to do so in a post just for that.

Anon commenting is on for this entry; IP logging is, as always, off. 

Does anyone lurk here? I do wonder. Anyway, I am quite easygoing about comments, so don't worry - I won't demand to know how you found my journal or anything if you do comment on some random journal entry. No need to be shy unless you want to be. :)

In other news, I have finaly listened to the Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica) version of "All Along the Watchtower" and it is so very epic, omg. I could just listen to the layered guitar riffs/crunches at the end on loop for hours. I am sad that this song has taken so long to work its way into my life, but I suppose that's what I get for not watching BSG.

I think I have discovered a new Epic Ficcing song. Now all I have to do is write Epic Fic.

I had other things to say but I managed not to sleep last night on account of being an idiot, and so I am very tired now and am going to bed. Good night, all.



Oh, one more question: is it bad form to repost older fic to halfamoon ? Because I feel like I should contribute but the odds of me managing to write anything new by the time the fest closes are, per usual, slim.

But then I went and wanted a drabble from bodyline  so now I have to put this here. Move along, move along, nothing here to see, just doing another meme in the vain hope that one day I'll write something.

The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request that I write a drabble ficlet (because I laugh at word limits) of any pairing/character with a prompt. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level. (If you absolutely can't write, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to offer drawings or icons or something instead.)

Fandoms same as last go-round: Doctor Who, CSIs, Bones, NCIS, Pirates of the Caribbean, NuTrek, Final Fantasy X, The Brave and the Bold, Transformers Animated

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Also, dammit "Bad Romance" has been stuck in my head for the past five days. It's still not quite as bad as when I got "There's No Such Thing as Aliens" stuck in my head for months on end, but it is somewhat embarrassing to catch myself humming "roma, roma-ma" apropos of absolutely nothing.

But first, Useless Fact Time: After looking at lyric translations for both, I've realized that Rammstein's "Dalai Lama" actually tells the exact same story as Sarah Brightman's "Figlio Perduto". Really. Both are based on the Goethe poem "Der Erlkonig"; the Brightman song is an Italian translation of the poem itself, while the Rammstein song is a modernized adaptation. How's that for musical connections you never thought you'd make.

How come nobody talks about "Dalai Lama", anyway? I got Reise, Reise for "Keine Lust" and "Los", and "Keine Lust" was the big single from the album, but "Dalai Lama" is probably one of my favorite Rammstein songs thus far. The high, chanting chorus is beautifully eerie. And then besides that there's "Ohne Dich", which is downright tender and proof that not everything in German sounds angry by default. I mean, just look at the lyrics!

(While I'm on the subject: Dear Herzeleid, for a late Christmas present it would be very very nice if you could give me the rest of the translations for Liebe ist fur alle da, because I really want to know what "Donaukinder" is actually about before I start singing along to it in garbled phonetic pseudo-German.)

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I always come up with several dozen more fic ideas than I ever write for any given fandom, and this would probably be one of the ones I don't write just because it only dubiously makes sense in canon, as well as being...well, kind of wrong even for TF fandom standards. But if I talk about it than I can resist writing it whereas if I leave it buzzing about in my head I'll end up trying to write it and then I'll have to explain myself. Or not finishing it.

( Contains spoilers for TransWarped and Human Error, and I really don't know why I keep acting like anyone cares. )


Good golly, I'm even meta-ing about this series. What on Earth's gotten into me.

Bits of this were written as my reward for completing a sufficient amount of homework, and now I suppose it is time to pick up the pace. Cheerio.

To those on my flist celebrating: a very Merry Christmas to you and yours. To those not celebrating: a very merry Thursday and Friday and a happy New Year to you and yours, and may 2010 treat you well.

Most of the snow got cleared out of the roads by Saturday, so I didn't spend that long snowed in, but for most of this week I have been either doing not-quite-last-minute shopping (got presents for everyone I'm going to see before Christmas yesterday, rah), helping Mom make cookies, loafing about, doing homework ahead of time for once (because it turned out what I really needed was a swift smack upside the head, thanks Big Sis), and drawing during my study breaks. It turns out I have not completely forgotten how to draw the human figure! Hurray for me. Now I just have to learn how to draw it moving.

I will probably be absent a while longer yet (though I'll pop back in after the Yuletide reveal*), as aside from Christmasing I do have to finish my homework and bibliography by the 30th and am determined not to do it all last-minute again, and the easiest way to do that is to get the hell off of LJ and all my other time sinks, so if I don't see you all before then, I hope you've had a wonderful holiday. I'll try to get a few stories and things written for fandom_stocking  if I can.



*I'm not sure if I'm getting a story - I didn't see my AO3 handle or Yuletide pseud when I searched the Collection, but I also wasn't watching the pinch-hit list early on. Plus, I defaulted, and if a defaulter's gift-giver defaults then the defaulter's request doesn't go to pinch-hit, so that might be what happened. Which is fair, and frankly preferable because it eases some of my guilt over defaulting, but I'd like to know, you know?

It is with some relief that I admit that part of my Stop Being A Screw-Up Plan for next semester (which I've worked out with my advisers and counselor) is absolutely no more ficathons during the school year. Not even little ones. Less stress for me, less listening to me whine for you. Everybody wins!


On another note entirely, I've been so cut off from both malls and the radio that I'm not sick to death of Christmas carols yet like I usually am this time of year. It's a nice feeling.

I just have one more paper. One more, and then I get to leave for Thanksgiving Break.

Of course I haven't started that one paper yet. What do you think I am, a conscientious student? Pah.

The trouble is that I can think of a topic I can prattle on about for five pages, and I actually think it's a really neat idea, but I can't figure out where I'm meant to go with it. Comparing Antony and Cleopatra to Henry V and Falstaff seemed like such a clever idea, but after that I just don't know what sort of point I'd make by pointing out that Antony is like a less-Machiavellian and capable Henry and Cleopatra is like a female royal Falstaff, except as a tragic character. Maybe the point would be that Shakespeare was trying to show that Machiavellian politics weren't new, that even The Roman Forefathers engaged in them - and thus maybe removing some of their stigma? Or that Antony is who Henry might have become had his attachment to his friends and Falstaff been genuine, if he'd fulfilled his promises to Falstaff?

This seemed like a much better idea when I was thinking it over in the shower. But then, everything seems like a better idea in the shower. It's where my best thinking happens. Clearly this means I should shower all the time with a small, miraculously waterproof notebook in there, but then were it not disastrously bad for the environment I would be quite happy to stand under hot running water all day and think about things.

...I just realized what an awkward introduction this much be to people new to this journal. Um, hello, new people here from the Doctor Who Friending Meme that I was too preoccupied all day to make a pimp post for! I promise I don't complain about school and talk about showers all the time. Most of the time, maybe, but not all the time.

Hmm, other things I wanted to talk about...Oh, three points:

1. Lessons has been posted to Teaspoon; give the mods time to clear it through the Queue, as I only just submitted it. At this rate I am seriously considering dropping Yuletide just because I underestimated just how busy I was going to be at the end of this semester, though most of that is just pent-up frustration at not being able to find by recipient's Dear Author Letter, augh augh augh. Well, I know what I'll be doing with my spare hour on the plane home. (Did you know planes have Wifi now? They do. I know, I was shocked too.)

Besides, if Yuletide's off my plate that gives me more wiggle room to work on Made Up Your Mind chapters 2 and 3, and now that I've done some plot-sketching and freewriting for the both of them I am really, really excited to start writing them in earnest. Although if I was really going to be virtuous I'd work on Memory and Experiment Chapters 3 and 2, ahem ahem.

I have got to increase this one-chapter-a-year pace. It's getting worrying.

2. The final project in my Film Studies requires us to play a video game and write 1000 words about how it adapts filmic and televisual techniques to tell a story. I am tempted to use Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, because a) It's my very favoritest video game ever, b) I've already played it which saves me whole scads of time, and c)I think there is a lot of essay material to be milked from the Sanit effects and the massive interface screw they involve. Of course, given that it is my very favoritest game ever, I'm not sure I'd be able to maintain the critical distance required of an analytical essay, and my essay will quite possibly degenerate into "BEST GAME EVAR OMG"*.

*I won't argue it really is the best evar, because there's never going to be an answer as to what is, but I really do love it that much. I hate to sound cliche, because every reviewer ever has said this, but it really is one of the counterexamples I hold up when people claim that video games cannot be a work of legitimate art. If you're a fan of horror, particularly of the Lovecraftian variety, you seriously owe it to yourself to track this game down. Go on. Do it. Gamecubes are cheap these days.

3. I finally watched the music video for Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance". It's a well-executed video, certainly, but I don't actually like the song very much. Not that I hate it, it's just...eh. Not my favorite track.

What I found far more fascinating were videos of Gaga performing "unplugged", with just her voice and the piano. Lady's got *pipes*. I'm duly impressed. :)


Okay I should finish my essay before it gets to be 4 a.m. again. Good night/morning, flist. Hopefully I will be home by the nest time I talk to you.

Nicked from futuresoon :

The problem with LJ: We all think we are so close, but really we know nothing about one another. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

In other news, I went to bed at 8 p.m. last night, directly after I showered. This left me with no dinner and an awful case of bed hair but I haven't felt this awake in weeks. Probably there is a lesson to be learned here.

Also I tried compiling a list for the "100 songs by female artists or bands fronted by women" meme a couple of days ago, only to discover, to my dismay, that I don't think I actually have 100 different ladies on my iTunes library. I hadn't realized until then that electronic music (which makes up a lot of my library) is such a man's game. Which is a shame, since the anonymity of the artist in electronic should make it a gender-neutral genre, but the only female electronic artist I can think of off the top of my head is Laurie Anderson. And Enigma, who only gets in there because they consistently use one or two female vocalists and some songs are co-produced by a woman (Enigma's music is written and produced primarily by a man). [ETA} And Goldfrapp! I forgot Goldfrapp, how very dare I. The band's named after the female lead singer, after all. Hmm.

Apparently, mashups between Rammstein and t.A.t.U are practically a subgenre in and of themselves, given the sheer number of YouTube vids devoted to such concoctions (of varying quality; the "Mein Herz Brennt"/"Pokazhi mne lubov" mashup in this vid's my favorite of the lot).

I really don't know what to do with this revelation.

Also you know how I keep talking about writing a second chapter to Made Up Your Mind? I typed up most of a potential second chapter today. It ended up...odd. And kind of gross. And the Master's in it for some reason. And for some reason I decided to really get my body-horror on.

Two thoughts:

1) I HAVE BEEN WATCHING TOO MANY EVANGELION VIDS PLEASE SEND HELP. It's not my fault that a good 60% of all the AMVs that get recced to me are from Eva! I can't be blamed if it starts bleeding through! 

Have any of you ever watched Evangelion? Is it as demented as it looks? Should I just watch it and get it overwith and get some of my geek cred back?

2) I could write cracked-out dream sequences forever. They're probably some of the most fun I've had while writing.


And it is time to do some work.

1. The Taming of the Shrew makes for some really, really uncomfortable reading, and while I appreciate the efforts of feminist critics everywhere who tie themselves into interpretive pretzels trying to make the whole affair less repulsively sexist, I'm not sure I'm buying it. You can read allegories of gender performance and re-examination of social roles into it, and I don't think for a second that Shakespeare meant for Petruchio and Katherina's relationship to be a model one, nor even Katherina as a model of feminine behavior (he writes so many other good female characters in the comedies, after all), but the ending is still tough going. But we're moving on to As You Like It after this, and I like that one.

2. The first Matrix movie is incredibly loud. The bass, it is still throbbing across my eardrums the morning after watching it. With respect to my Film professor, I suspect that The Matrix is one of those movies you're not actually supposed to watch on a big screen with big speakers because you'll wind up stone deaf.

Also, maybe it's just that when it was released Matrix was hailed as the best thing since sliced bread and thus I was expecting to hate it on second viewing, but the movie holds up pretty well. There are some clunky lines and acting and way too many wide-eyed repetitions of "He's the One!!!", but Laurence Fishburne actually pulls off a great deal of lines that really shouldn't work, and Agent Smith wasn't nearly as overplayed as I seem to remember him being. Plus, there's a lot of playing with the media/audience division and the nature of a medium itself, which is really cool to watch now that I'm a little more savvy to it. (Notice, for example, how the "authority figures", Morpheus and the Oracle, are almost always shot in close-up with their face to the viewer, effectively talking to us; there are very few two-shots.)

Also, I want there to be prequel movies all about Switch and Apock and Mouse and Tank and Dozer having adventures. Even if Switch and Apock don't really do anything I inexplicably love them, and despite being sketchy I think Mouse is just adorable.

3. The Mind Robber is one of the best things to happen to Doctor Who, ever, in the entire history of the program. On occasion I'll leave a DW serial going in the background to have some familiar noise while I'm working; I can't do that with Mind Robber. It demands full attention because it's just that good. 

Again, maybe it's just because I hadn't seen it in a while, but I hadn't remembered just how intense and scary the first episode was, with the sense of intrusion and control and sheer unpredictability - the kind of surreal horror of the familiar rules of the universe breaking down, replaced by new rules that you don't understand and can't learn. And the Doctor's desperation to maintain control of his own mind and his own ship conflicting with his worry for his companions and the thought that he may not be able to do anything at all for them...it...I just...brrrr. :(

Other things:

4. Reading The Trial for class and am halfway finished with it, which isn't so great as I'm supposed to have it finished by tomorrow, but I suppose that's better than not having started it. Progress! Work ethics! 

Anyway, despite some iffy things about the translation (a lot of the dialogue is really stilted, but then that might just be how Kafka writes) I'm enjoying this much more than I did Metamorphosis, mostly because Josef K. actually does things and goes to new places and makes plot happen, whereas Metamorphosis is pretty much entirely about Gregor Samsa being a cockroach and how much that sucks. 

I'm still not sure why every female character in the book wants to sleep with Josef, but I'm sure that'll have some relevance by the end.

5. VH1 Classic is apparently having a Beatles-a-thon to promote Rock Band: The Beatles (which I would have bought right this second if I had money and a game console to play it on), which means I've watched Help! twice in the past couple of days. Supposedly, this movie was made before the Beatles were on all manner of illicit substances. I don't see how that's possible.

Also, all the cuddling and puppy-piling and silliness in the "Ticket To Ride" music video section makes me start to realize what all those Beatles RPS shippers are on about, much to my shame and horror. 

5.a. In flim class I started talking with my classmates about children's TV we used to watch, and was delighted to discover that the boy sitting in front of me was not only a fellow Thomas the Tank Engine viewer but a Ringo purist (i.e. no narrator was ever better than Ringo, though I contended that George Carlin certainly wasn't bad). I love my school so much.

6. I appear to have gone from "incapable of writing anything" to "writing 1500 words or so, stalling once I hit a plot point, and abandoning the ensuing fic fragment, never to be seen again". Equally unproductive and annoying, yes, but better than nothing.

7. I have internets back! Sort of. It keeps cutting out and insisting I use the LAN cable even though I'm using wireless, but at least it's here. Hopefully this will not prevent me from getting things accomplished, except how it already sort of has. Like lookit that, I just missed Commons lunch AGAIN. Ergh.


And now I have officially spent too much time on the Internets again and must be off.

First panicked note: It's May? Already? Why? I don't approve at all of this state of affairs.

Anyway, other things: 

1. I can't believe it took me so long to watch Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, but I just finished all six episodes over the course of three days (mostly during study/homework breaks). It's a show-within-a-show, supposedly made in the Eighties but too controversial and horrific to be released until 2000, with bonus commentary by the actors and writer/director/star/visionary/dreamweaver, Garth Marenghi. (The actors play two roles; the roles within the "show" proper and the roles of the actors playing the characters within the show. Make sense? It makes more sense when you watch it.)

I'd highly recommend it to MST3K fans and fans (in every sense of the word) of awful 70's and 80's TV, but in addition to skewering the tropes of both 80's horror and horror-writer vanity projects, it nails the self-congratulatory "candidness" of actor interviews and commentary as well, and even as an admitted lover of commentary tracks I find it mimics their tone perfectly.

The whole series is available on YouTube, and is worth checking out. It's also endlessly quotable, as demonstrated in the subject line.

As a bonus, Richard Ayoade is really good-looking.

2. Still not so sure about this Dreamwidth thing - it's moved to open beta, and a whole lot of people on my flist and around fandom seem to be setting up shop there, but as noted I am terribly lazy lately and do not much feel like doing all the work of setting up another corner of the web to sit in, especially if there's no real incentive for me to use it. *ponders*

3. I want Danny Elfman to do at least a few episodes of scoring for Who. Not the entire score, mind you, because even I would find all that Elfman wearying, but I think he should at least score one of the episodes where Moffat decides he wants to scare the pants off us. Especially if he uses some formerly-innocuous childhood Thing to do so.

This thought brought to you by the fact that I've had "This Is Halloween" going on loop in my mind for a couple of days now, just watched the video for it, and found it to still be a rather brilliant opener to The Nightmare Before Christmas. Less than surprisingly, the Marylin Manson cover is inferior, mainly because Manson decides to forgo the tune of the lyrics at points where I think the tune ups the creepy charm more than a distorted hiss does.

4. Too much YouTube trawling means that now I really, really want to play System Shock 2, despite it supposedly being one of the scariest games ever made and I just completely spoiled the big twist at the end for myself. Of course, the big twist at the end is why I want to play - ( cut for That Big Spoiler even though I'm sure none of you have any intention of playing )

So who wants to sit next to me and hold my hand while I keep myself up at night with this game? I do this to myself, I don't know why. *sigh*

5. Speaking of things I'm terrified of, I also find myself wanting to watch The Thing, partly because of this review of the video game (!) by Spoonyman, who loves the film, and partly because Dad said that the alien in The Memory Always Lies kind of reminded him of the Thing in concept (something that could be anyone at anytime, although I didn't point out that the alien I'd written couldn't eat people's faces off). I figure I should know the source material I'm unintentionally cribbing from. Plus, the best way to figure out how to write something scary is to read and watch scary stuff, yeah? And I do want to write something scary eventually.

Also, Kurt Russell. I'm just saying. ;)

6. Speaking of scary things I want to write, ( cut for more writing wittering about things I want to write. )

7. Yet another meme, because while you know how I am with writing memes at least this will give me something to do while I'm stuck in bed (though my mother has made warning noises about my computer time):

I'll write a ficlet of at least 100 words for the first five people to comment with:
1) up to three characters (or a pairing) and
2) a one-word prompt.

Fandoms include the usual - Who (New and Classic, up to late Four/early Five), L&O-verse, CSI-verse, Pirates-verse, FFX (not X-2), Middleman, NCIS, Burn Notice, whatever else I happen to be forgetting at the moment but which I've talked about before.

8. I am so very very tired, as I have been for most of this week, night and day, and thus am going to bed. Good night all. Hopefully sleeping a lot will make me less lethargic and disinclined to do anything. Will get something accomplished in the morning.

1. You know how, a while back, I was talking about an AU where the Doctor and the Master had always been Time Ladies, right from the beginning? It only just occurred to me that, in order to maintain this AU, crispy!Time Lady!Master in Keeper of Trakken has to possess Kassia. I had just sort of imagined an Ainley-like lady (with bonus camp-villainess fishnets and eyeliner) for girl!Ainley!Master, but this is the first time it ever really hit me that girl!Ainley!Master would be in Kassia's body.

This presents all sorts of intriguing possibilities and makes me really, really wish I could draw.

2. After hearing about it and seeing the icons for months I finally cracked and listened to Caramelldansen. And now it's stuck in my head. On loop. For the past two hours.

Mmmm, tastes like insulin shock.

3. ( Spoilers (kind of, after a fashion) for a fic I haven't finished. )
I managed 800 words of writing today, which was wonderful even if it didn't help me get my homework done. However, all 800 words are basically fluff, and I feel strangely guilty about posting fluff publicly even if I finish it. Like I should be writing something more substantial, you know?

Besides, looking over what I just wrote, I'm almost certain I offended someone.

Back to work, tum tee tum.