stunt_muppet

My laptop broke.

I'm not sure how, but it broke bad - it doesn't even want to start in Safe Mode, so even the basic drivers must be borked. I've never heard of a virus doing damage that deep, but given that my computer went from "normal internet browsing" to "frozen" to "effectively a paperweight" I'm left to assume that a virus it is.

I don't even understand why people write computer viruses. You don't make any money off of it, and nobody knows it's you that did it so it doesn't seem like it'd be for the fame; the only reason people would do it is because they're just a colossal bag of dicks who enjoys the thought of inconveniencing and frustrating others for lulz.

On the other hand, this is probably something of a Sign From Above that I spend way, way too much time on the internet and should make changes accordingly.

So...yeah. I'll be even more absent than usual for a while, I guess.

You know, I think I just managed to include fanwanky denials of Timewyrm: Revelation in one of my fic drafts without even meaning to. Huh. Apparently my NA nerd-rage is just that powerful.

(No, I wasn't writing an actual fic, because I still have, ahem, things to finish not to mention schoolwork out to here, but I ticked out a draft on my cell phone just before bed last night. Forcing myself to write things might actually be working!)

I have a feeling though, that this renewed bout of NA nerd rage is up to the fact that I've spoilered myself for The Waters of Mars and


...and I'm done. Okay. That was perhaps more rant than I planned. The main thing I wanted to say was, on those occasions when I'm not panicking about Yuletide, would anyone be willing to brainstorm/idea-bounce with me about the additional chapters I've drafted to Made Up Your Mind? I'd like to know if they work thematically or if I'm being a pretentious wanker again and should stop.

Also I would really like a quick beta for my (late, woe) dw_femslash fic - mostly for SPaG, but I'd also like to know if it's tonally all over the place or moves too slow.

So, um, a little help, flist?

You shouldn't try to watch experimental French films when all you can think about is your oppressive sinus congestion and how much you wish it wasn't there anymore. After twenty minutes of fragmented musings and explorations on the nature of memory, time, and death, your attention starts to give.

In my defense I'm supposed to have seen this film by tomorrow, and efforts to will away the general malaise have been for naught. I just cheated and read the narration transcription; hopefully that'll be enough to fake my way through the class.

Hopefully I will not be this deceased of mind when it comes time to watch whatever the rest of our experimental films are; I don't know that I could handle Matthew Barney* period, let alone with a head full of sinus goo.

*We will probably not actually be watching any Matthew Barney because his page on Wikipedia informs me that the Cremaster cycle is not commercially available and is only sold in a limited series of 20 DVDs for upwards of $100,000. Which...you know, the plot summary that sounds kind of like what would happen if you watched an X-rated ballet in rewind while ingesting enormous handfulls of mescaline, I can deal with; that's pretty typical of experimental cinema, at least in the past two decades or so. But that kind of price tag? The hell you smoking, Barney?

One day I will write that fic I had in mind for the dw_historical ficathon. It didn't answer any prompt entirely (though one day I will think of a plot beyond the premise for that Metropolis-Maschinenmesch-went-missing-because-it's-a-Cyberman story. Oh, and learn enough about 20's Berlin to write it accurately) but it was a Five Things story about five times the Doctor disagreed with modern artists and featured shouting matches with Duchamp, Kasmir Malevich, an artist in the future who made obscene mobiles out of Barbies, Frank Stella, and Heironymous Bousch - making what I thought at the time was a rather nifty point about every artist, at some point, being a "modern artist" and how the art innovations we currently take for granted (even perspective, to a point) were at one point considered shocking, ugly, or even obscene/immoral.

Obvious problems arise when I query: a) whether anyone would read the thing, b) how I would write this without committing personal insult to every artist I cite, because I have to write their side of the argument too (unless it's just the Doctor looking at their paintings and ranting, which is much less fun) and the hell I can capture the wit and play of Duchamp or Malevich's deep mysticism, and Frank Stella hasn't issued jack by way of personal artist statements so how would I even write him. Besides, he's still alive, so it'd be weird, and c) even if I could do that how I'd write such a thing without revealing just what a pretentious wanker I actually am.

Seriously, I didn't realize it until I took a look at the True Art Is Incomprehensible page on TV Tropes, but I'm the kind of person who looks at a pile of bricks in the middle of a room in an exhibit and tries to figure out what it means when everyone else has wisely gone back to the Monets. When did this happen? Can I get the wanker label removed if I admit I think Damien Hirsch is overrated and a substantial fraction of performance art is disaffected art majors trying to see what they can get away with? Help!

(I am imagining what would happen if I kept writing dream-sequence fics, got angry when no one read them or could figure out what they meant, and devoting entire authors' notes - nay, entire essays to insisting that yes, actually, this means shit, and I spent a long time figuring out what kind of shit it means so shut up and read it, you bunch of damned Philistines. Hopefully I lack the intellectual capacity/my head is not quite so far up my own arse (take your pick) to actually sink to that level. I hope.)

Anyway. General Malaise managed to progress this evening from "mild congestion" to "scarcely able to breathe for coughing/stuffiness", so rather than do my laundry or any of those things I was supposed to do I spent today with a cup of miso soup that J-of-the-house, who loves me very very much and is a good person, brought me from Bonsai, watching French experimental films and trying not to think of how much I hurt (my left shoulder has also, for inexplicable reasons, become sore). I am torn between going to bed with these vague images in my mind and staying up a few hours part my bedtime with some big, gooey cheesy poof of a movie so I'll sleep better. I don't sleep too well when I'm thinking about things.

There was a point to this entry and here it is: Despite my protestations to the contrary I am thinking of maybe signing up to pinch-hit for Yuletide. It seems an easier way to get involved than actually signing up as part of the exchange. I've looked at the request list (look, after a while you run out of Things To Do On The Internet When You're Sick) and there are a handful of fandoms on there I can write (though I don't know how comfortable I'd be writing them, and once again there's no Brave and the Bold, because I apparently truly am the only person watching this show, alas woe), and...well...it's Yuletide. I kind of would like to participate someday; people do talk about how much fun it is, and I do love getting presents.

So, Yuletide participants past and present on my flist, do you think starting as a pinch-hitter is a good idea? Is that what you did, or did you jump right in? Any advice?



*looks back up at entry* And this is why you don't try to compose an entry while tired and suffering from a head cold. I'll get me coat.

1. It really does irritate me when people start the whole "ew, cosplayers are freaks/cosplay is creepy" meme. I know a lot of cosplayers; I've cosplayed myself, once, though it wasn't very good; I'd still like to do it someday (I'd be girl!Five). Dressing up as a character doesn't mean you think you are them or whatever; dressing up as a character and acting in character still doesn't mean you think you are them. It's just fun. People have fun in different ways; for some people, dressing up is fun. Put your judgement away, it's yucky.

But what irritates me more is when the people who call cosplayers freaks ARE POSTING ON AN ANONYMOUS INTERNET FANDOM MESSAGE BOARD. Let me clarify: the single-fandom equivalent of 4chan.

POT. KETTLE. BLACK.

2. In non-meme-related thoughts, it also irritates me when I finally find new fic for a pairing I love that gets, oh, maybe two or three new fics a year? And I start reading it and it's funny and hot and plays with a fanfic cliche that I like and so far so good -

- and then it breaks out one of my biggest fanfic pet peeves. In this case, epithets.

*headdesks* No, no, no, fanfic writer! You were doing so well! And I want to like this fic, I really do, but when you call your characters "the Gallifreyan" and "the scientist" and "the Earther" (?) instead of just using their names I just can't! It would have been so easy to fix! You were so close!

Yeah. I hate it when that happens. I kind of want to mention it to the author in my comment, since it'd be such an easy thing to fix and it'd make the fic so much better, but I don't know how this author feels about concrit and the Who fandom has already had one big screaming tantrum about concrit; I don't want to wind up in the middle of another. Not that I think this author is that delicate (I'm sure she isn't) but you know how it is.

3. Less ranty note: I have developed a mysterious craving for Three/Brigadier post-Inferno fics wherein the Doctor seeks some sort of comfort or reassurance from the Brig after what he saw in the parallel world (because I know he walked it off by the end of the serial, but if it's showing up as one of the things that scares him the worst in The Mind of Evil, it has to have affected him more than he let on, symbolism and control issues notwithstanding). I can kind of imagine him wanting the reassurance that the Brigadier he knows could never be the Brigade Leader, not in this universe; that possibility of who he could be had been negated and would never come back. Especially given the uneasy dynamic between the two of them, where despite the Doctor being the intellectual and technical superior he is still dependant on the Brig's good graces because if the Brig turns him away he has few other places to go, and no other resources to try to get the TARDIS repaired. Having the Brig as a potentially threatening figure would be especially troubling in that instance, methinks.

Of course, since both the Doctor and the Brigadier are about as capable of expressing their emotions as a sand dollar is at doing multivariable calculus, it ends up being mostly awkward and halting and unspoken and roundabout and very little if anything actually gets resolved. Entire conversations are held using naught but uncomfortable points of ellipsis.

I really don't know why I want this, given that I don't even like hurt/comfort as a genre okay actually I do a little bit but I pretend that I don't because I know I shouldn't since the express purpose of hurt/comfort is to provide a cheap emotional fix and it's most often derivative and unsatisfying and I just have no taste at all, I'll just put that out there and that scenario is nothing if not glorified hurt/comfort. But I want it. Kind of want to write it, but mostly I want to read it because the absolute last thing I need is another writing project.

4. SPEAKING OF WRITING PROJECTS. I transcribed all the various bits and pieces of my Remix from my notebook and cell phone onto a single document, and guess whose fic is now a total of 850 words? \o/ Apparently I had written more than I thought I had. Granted, the actual story isn't near finished yet, but at least I don't have to stress as much over making my word count. That I should be able to do.

*dances*

And now I must go back to work.

Fandom's managed to fail hard again in my absence, so let's just go over this one more time:

1. Rape, dubious consent, graphic violence, violence against children, torture, and other common triggering content needs to be warned for. Period. A trigger is not the same thing as a squick. Someone who is triggered doesn't just feel disgusted or upset; being triggered can be akin to a flashback for people with personal experiences with that kind of content. And there are many readers who have personal experience and don't want to expose themselves to that kind of content. Refusing to warn for triggering content is not edgy. It is not telling people to grow up. It's saying that you don't care if a rape survivor relives their experience. Your fucking artistic integrity is not more important than that. Spoiling your story is not more important than that. Have some fucking consideration for other people. It takes maybe three minutes to type a warning.

1.a. If your story is so dependant on shock that it's ruined, RUINED I say! if you warn for surprise rape, it's a pretty fucking weak story. Learn to construct a compelling narrative and then come talk to me.

1.b. If you're a survivor and you're okay with reading noncon/dubcon/violence/whatever, good for you. That doesn't mean everyone else is okay with it. Warning still required.

1.c. Warning for triggering content is not the same as warning for, say, character death. Yes, I understand the argument that warning for character death would in some cases spoil a story, and I personally don't like warnings for character death. But a warning for graphic violence doesn't spoil the story, and still alerts people who might be triggered. Furthermore, it is possible to code warnings in white-on-white so people who don't want to read them don't have to.

2. If Person A performs a sexual act on Person B, and Person B says no, pushes them away, or otherwise refuses, and Person A continues anyway, and there is no prior agreement between the two with regards to safewords, safe spaces, established relationships, et cetera, then Person A is committing rape. The gender of the people involved is irrelevant. The physical strength of the people involved is irrelevant. No means no.

2.a. Men can be victims of rape. Men do, in fact, have the ability to turn down sex. The idea that men always want sex, will never refuse it, would just love to be woken up by a blowjob even if they say no, is an ugly gender stereotype, part of the same rape-apologetic mindset that propagates the "she must have wanted it"/"she shouldn't have dressed like that if she didn't want to put out" excuse. After all, if men constantly crave sex, simply can't help themselves, then of course they can't be blamed if a woman leads them on, right?

tl;dr: Yes, you do need to warn for triggering content. Yes, no means no. I really don't get we need to cover this again. Is it so hard to think of other people?

Guys, don't ever let me fall asleep on my futon again.

I settled down for a nap yesterday, on account of staying up late Wednesday night/Thursday morning for no actual reason. I already had a pile of stuff on my bed that I was too tired to move, so I just grabbed my blanket, curled up on the futon, and set my alarm for two hours later (it was about 4:00 p.m. at the time).

I woke up at 11:59 p.m. making a face like this: D: My back was in agony a little bit, and while I was uncomfortable lying there I was way too sore to get up for about ten minutes.

Lesson learned: No more naps on futon. In fact, it'd probably be best for me to get proper sleep instead of taking naps that turn into day-long unconscious spells. I used to be able to stay up for days on end and only take occasional two-hour dozes; now if I go without sleep for 24 hours I lose concentration and drop off at the first opportunity. This doesn't bode well for next year.

In other news, someone left the Wall Street Journal out on the table where I was eating lunch today, so I took a look though it, the Journal not being one of my regular news sources. On the Op-Ed page, right below a rather interesting (if hyperbolic) article on racial divisions in the environmentalist movement (which I occasionally strongly disagreed with, but, still, interesting), was an angry opinion piece on how we should start taxing blue jeans.

I honestly can't figure out if the writer is joking or not. He seems to take himself a bit too seriously for that, but I can't imagine someone who gets space on the WSJ Opinion pages getting that worked up over jeans of all things. Even if he is joking, the subtext of the joke is really quite unfortunate. Yes, let's tax blue jeans, the cheap, utilitarian, durable garment that almost anyone can wear. After all, we've already priced and taxed the lowest income bracket out of their homes, cars, jobs, and decent food; why not tax them out of their pants while we're here?

He also spoke of it as the ideal variety of "soft paternalism". Because I've always wanted my government to tell me how to dress, yes sir. And his comments on "undifferentiated dressing" veer, for me, dangerously close to an advocacy of gendered and class-divided dressing - the womenfolk shouldn't be wearing pants! And for heaven's sake, why are you upper-class types dressing like poor people?!

Of course, maybe the subtext is intentional? Maybe he's mocking all those politicians who talk about passing laws requiring teenage boys to pull their pants up? I can't imagine the Wall Street Journal wasting page space on an angry rant about pants otherwise.


No other purpose to this entry. Carry on.

Well, fine. Fine, WikiUploader, fuck you too. Twice. With a household appliance.

Urgh. Is it fall break yet? How about now?

One of the reasons that I love hanging around in malls is that they allow you to experience the terrifying nadir of human fashion sense. It at once makes me feel better about myself (no matter how dumpy and blah I look, at least I'm not wearing a denim onesie) and tempts me to fall on my knees in public and pray for the instant eradication of every single pair of neon footless tights from the face of the Earth.

Seriously, do people not see how ugly their outfits are? How can you put on a pair of neon pink footless tights, look at yourself in the mirror, and not see that the lower half of your body, no matter how thin your thighs and toned your calves, looks like some sort of carnival zeppelin? Or, hell, even aside from making your legs look fat, there's also the point that you look like you're about to break out into the Crayola mating dance.

I have issues with footless tights in general, despite my mother's repeated attempts to get me to wear them, but black footless tights I can forgive. Neon? Neon pants shouldn't exist, y'all. Neon footless tights are compounding abomination unto abomination.

Anyway. Yes. Was not nearly as productive today as I intended to be, but I at least picked up my dress and got myself shapewear, thus officially completing the Bridesmaid's Dress checklist. I am very, very thankful that I haven't dove in to the wide world of shapewear beforehand, y'all. It's not comfortable, it makes my skin all sweaty, and it makes me feel a bit like a robot, since I have to either squat or bend exactly at the waist. Alas, satin is a harsh mistress, so a tummy-tugger it is for me.

I can't help but realize that I used to take long, leisurely mall trips. I'd head to the mall with a friend and make a day of it, popping in stores and trying things on at whim, usually not buying anything but having fun nonetheless because I am a stereotype, yes. Lately my shopping trips have been too focused - get in, find what I need, spend two hours dithering over it, and go. I miss the old shopping trips. Shall have to organize another one.

I keep trying to remind myself that I need to do my Chem work, and that if I don't I will hate myself on Sunday, and fic writing can wait. And then I go back to writing fic anyway. Maybe disconnecting the Internet for a bit will help, giving me less reason to be at the computer in the first place? I don't know.

Hmm.

[ETA] R.I.P. Paul Newman.

Hate this essay omg. Am so fucking sick of "Shadow Over Innsmouth" and H.P. Lovecraft and his damn verbiage. Less adjectives plz.

Also, that Bio assignment what was due tomorrow? Turns out every single one of my Wiki Glossary entries is MAGICALLY NO LONGER THERE. Which I suppose I should have figured, since there've been instances of the Wiki deleting things on the group account before, but I HAVE NO WAY OF PROVING THOSE ENTRIES WERE EVER THERE AND IT'S OUR FIRST GRADED ASSIGNMENT AND BASICALLY MY ONLY HOPE IS GOING TO MY TEACHER AND CRYING AT HIM. WHICH I'LL TOTALLY DO ANYWAY.

OH AND MY ANNOTATED GENE LINKS ARE GONE TOO.

AND THIS ESSAY'S DUE AT FIVE P.M.

WHAT THE SPARKLY RAINBOW SUNSHINE FUCK, UNIVERSE. I don't even have bollocks, please stop kicking me in them.

So.

Finally saw "Journey's End".

And I...you know what? I can't make a proper reaction post about it. All I can tell you is how it made me feel, because I'm not thinking sensibly about it right now.

Non-spoilery: It made me angry. It made me sad and puzzled and occasionally happy but...mostly, just angry. And I wish it didn't, because Season 4 has been so good and I don't like being angry at this show, but when the end credits rolled I was so mad I could spit.


So, as I often do when New Who consternates me, I dragged a plot point out-of-context back to Old School for the lulz.


So, um, in conclusion: Not happy. But not happy with some amusing mental images as consolation.