daystarsearcher

1. Thanks everybody for the input on the last post! I'm going with The Umbrella Shop. (Sorry, Colleen. Speechies will happen someday.)

2. Just finished writing a six page play for class. Its ridiculously obvious subtext (there was more nuanced subtext about the blindness of privilege, the childishness of certain xenophobic attitudes, etc.) was, "FUCK YOU, JOE ARPAIO."

(For those of you who missed my hiding-under-the-bed-I'm-so-freaked-out post this summer, he's "America's Toughest Sheriff" and in my humble opinion, completely insane and out of control.)

3. Need to do some more writing and reading. Probably won't get to work on 'The Three Bisexual Women You Meet in Fiction (Who Are All Actually the Same Person)' tonight, but I got some of the structure and jokes down last night, so we'll see. Need to get a rough script down tomorrow at the very latest.

4. Tomorrow I also need to get the rest of the information so I can finish my FAFSA. God, I hate having to fill that out. If I ever decided I was ready to have children, I would remember that I would have to fill that out when they went to college and postpone it another several years.

5. Also need to reapply for my job. Should probably do that tonight, but I need to get away from the computer, so I'll put it off till after I do my reading for class.

6. My laptop's new power cord is still not here. I miss being able to do homework on that.

Snagged from surreallis. Because I love talking about things I love, especially if they're imaginary.

Comment with the name of a female character (in any show, movie, book, comic, etc that you think I'm familiar with) and I'll tell you one thing I love about her. In return, you can do the same in your journal (if you like!).

1. I really hope I can work out this scheduling mess with my critical race theory seminar and my playwrighting and textual analysis class.

2. I will get back to posting on Reading the Romance, eventually.

3. This will doubtless be delayed by the fact that the library has just received my interlibrary loan of "The Toyminator" by Robert Rankin, the sequel to "Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse."

4. So...um...I kind of want to fill the Nichols/Eames/Goren prompt on Porn Battle. But if I do, it will probably end up not being that explicit, because I'm kind of unsure of the mechanics and I'm afraid I'll accidentally put an extra arm in there, or twist the human body in ways it was not meant to go, or something.

5. I actually forgot to post all my prompts for Porn Battle. Most of the pairings ended up there anyway, except Eames/Wheeler, Eames/Wheeler/Goren, and Facilier/ANYBODY (well, Naveen is the first choice) because SWEET MOTHER OF RODDENBERRY DOES KEITH DAVID HAVE A SEXY VOICE. OF SEX.

6. I still have seventy-five percent of my work study to fulfill. Time to hit the salt mines.

7. After PB and the next chapter of TBF, I need to take a break from writing fanfic or my head will asplode.

8. Speaking of TBF, I have the outline of the next chapter. I have daydreamed the entire chapter repeatedly in my head. And then I sit down and AAARGH THE WORDS WILL NOT COME GODDAMNIT.

9. Somebody did a Bones/X-Files prompt on PB for Bones/Scully. My first reaction was "Oh sweet lord the two women with the hottest eyebrows in the world THIS WOULD BE LIKE AN EXPLOSION OF EYEBROWS AND AWESOME." On further reflection, I think they're too similar to have sustainable chemistry, but they would still be adorable and amazing as an awkward, lonely, yearning one-time encounter.

10. Oh, I also planned to prompt Odo/Scully and Jayne/Javert, just to fill those myself with random ideas I got in a meme. Oh well. I probably'll only get around to filling one prompt anyway.

11. Meeting today to see if a theatre minor is feasible. Knock on wood.

12. I need to find a better wall adhesive. My Star Trek reboot poster and my Foolish Mortals poster keep falling down, as do some of my smaller posters and my calendar.

So my mentor on my fellowship project wants me to read Reading the Romance by Janice A. Radway. Apparently it's this study of romance novels and their readership that was really groundbreaking because it was one of the first studies to seriously look at fan interpretation of texts, and will therefore be valuable to my fandom research project.

Problem: I am incredibly prejudiced against romance novels.

I was reminded of this when I tried to start reading it on the bus ride home and got about two pages in before I was consumed by an irrational rage born of extreme cognitive dissonance. On one hand, as a fellow fan (of vastly different things, but still a fan) I wanted to sympathize with the subjects and protect them from mockery. On the other hand, they were reading things--with, thus far, a seeming lack of irony--that had titles like Pregnant by the Warrior and The Greek Billionaire's Secret American Virgin Mistress.

I decided the only way I was going to be able to get through this book would be to liveblog my reactions to it as I read it, with the result that I may be spamming a bit, depending on whether inspiration for TBF or any of my original stuff strikes and distracts me. Oh, and I'm supposed to be using my ridiculously long winter break to be writing comedy sketches too. Anyway, I would love it if anyone wants to join in and discuss/debate this stuff with me, but of course you can completely ignore it if you want.

( First: facing and examining my prejudice towards the genre; or, why I don't think I'm a hypocrite )

Well, all that'll probably make me look like an unenlightened schmuck once I start in on the book in earnest. Had to get it off my chest first though.
Thoughts?

So you know how you gazed at the television screen with each Star Trek episode, hoping against hope that somehow, someway you would get sucked into that amazing world and go on awesome adventures?
...well, maybe that was just me.
In any case, next best thing!
Check out this awesome new comm:
Enlist_in_Fleet.

And the enlistment rules:
The Rules.

Title: I Made This Half-Pony, Half-Monkey Monster to Please You
Fandom: LO:CI
Characters/Pairings: Goren/Eames
Rating: High PG-13/Low R
Warnings: AAAANNNNGGGGSSSTT. Also, sexy-times. Portrayal of mental illness by a nonprofessional. AU set post-Purgatory.
Disclaimer: I own none of this, and make no profit from it. I did some research, but if there are any inaccuracies, let me know and I would be happy to try to remedy them.

( Hope you had/are having a good holiday season! And that this ending constitutes enough of a happy ending for you. :)  )

Dear Goren and Eames:
We are at ten pages. You still have not made out. This is a problem.
Seriously, I need to finish this Secret Santa thing. Please cooperate.
Sincerely,
Me

Okay, so I've noticed that a fairly popular AU in CI fics is the whole "Goren and Eames go after Jack the Ripper" thing. I've also noticed a pattern of authors realizing that Eames, as a female, would not exactly be welcome in Scotland Yard, and so there is at least a token attempt to address that issue. Completely unaddressed, however, is the issue of race.
Yes, Goren and Eames fit the modern definition of white. (I have even joked a few times that since Carver left, the show is "whiter than a marshmallow and mayonnaise sandwich on Wonderbread.") But in 19th century England? That definition was a little different. As far as whiteness was concerned, Irish or Scottish, Italian (or the Mediterranean in general), Eastern European, and Jewish people need not apply. So if we're going with the fanon that Eames is Irish and Goren Italian, they're not white. Also, England in the time of Jack the Ripper? Its population had just doubled, largely due to Irish and Jewish immigrants. There was a lot of xenophobia. So Goren and Eames are probably not going to be the go-to guys in their fields (if Eames even gets to have a field), simply because prejudice would not have let them get that far. And if they have managed to claw their way to the top through sheer brains and hard work, that doesn't mean that all the prejudice people had towards them before that is going to magically drop away; in fact, resentment may cause it to increase.
Having reached that conclusion, I thought to myself, "Okay, all well and good, but where's the evidence that Eames and Goren are those ethnicities? I don't remember seeing it anywhere in canon.
( and so, without further ado, my new guide to what the main characters on CI's ethnicity might be )

...and there went two hours of my life researching an AU that I don't plan to try my hand at for a year, at least. Oh well, it'll be fun to try to keep this all in mind. I personally think it could make the story more interesting.

Edit because I realized I had written 'nationality' where I meant to write 'ethnicity

So my cousin had a Facebook status about how she hates songs that make prostitution out to be this incredibly glamorous and fun job. And so, being the repository of random-ass trivia that I am, I was all, "Hey, fun fact, did you know that a lot of prostitutes have symptoms comparable to PTSD? Basically their job is as stressful as getting shot at everyday."
And then some girl I don't even know commented on how amusing that was.
Me:...PTSD is funny?
Girl: lol no u comparin them to soldiers cause some of those guys come back really traumatic.
Me: Still really not getting what's funny about that, but sometimes I have trouble with tone over the Internet.
I basically backed off because I didn't want to start a fight with someone on my cousin's Facebook profile, but aaargh. I don't know. I'm not demanding that everyone agree with the results of one study I read while researching "There But For," but how is it okay to mock pain that deep, even if it's hypothetical? Just...gah.
And I'd like to think that writing "There But For" has nothing to do with my annoyance at Random Girl I Don't Even Know, and that even if I weren't I would still feel strongly about these issues, but honestly? Fictional characters almost always draw me into real life issues more than real people do. And I am really, really invested in Dutton right now, and random Facebook people who think prostitution is "icky why would u do thos things to stranger well i guess if u didnt hav someone OH WAIT its called your husband or wife" but that it doesn't make prostitutes "really traumatic" make me want to tear at my hair, call the police to report the brutal murder of both the English language and empathy, and just generally despair for humanity.

...and I'm sitting here crying. If I'm like this just from ordering Unseen Academicals, I can only imagine how it's going to be once I start reading it. Especially after the bawl-fest that was the last chapter of Nation. Just...damn. If I ever get Alzheimers, I hope I can face it with one-tenth of the courage and dignity Terry Pratchett has. Damn. That man. Just...damn. I'm so glad he's managed to get another book out and I hope he keeps writing for a long time to come, but I'm so scared at the same time that this book will be the last. And then I feel selfish for making this all about me, even though I know a lot of his fans are going through the same thing (it's pretty much every fandom_secret about him these days) and he'd surely understand.
So while I'm here reccing books that make me cry, let me rec The Book of Night Women by Marlon James, a fantabulous author who I get to have as a professor (again!) next semester. Oh my god, so good. Marlon James is one of the few authors who can write in a four hundred page book entirely in dialect and make it a pleasure to read, never condescending, never a struggle. His characters are hugely complex and flawed people struggling to assert even the tiniest shreds of their humanity in the inhumanly brutal world of slavery. The level of detail, the lack of sugarcoating, the vast spectrums of emotion in the complicated relationships between characters, the rhythm of the prose (I am deliberately avoiding calling it "lyrical" because he hates when his work gets called lyrical--he feels like that's code for "written by non-white"), just--holy fucking wow. His book John Crow's Devil was great, but this...this is beyond great.
Well, off to try to be funny now. I'll try to do you proud, Sir Pratchett.

So before I decided to go to my old acting professor's house, I was planning on spending Thanksgiving with me, myself, and I. We were going to invite over my laptop and several books. In preparation for this partay I bought a bunch of ingredients, and when I changed my mind about the holiday destination, I said "screw it" and went ahead and made Random Stew/Soup anyway.
I set the stove on a really low temperature and filled up our biggest pot with four cups of apple cider, one can of kidney beans, one can of black beans, a chopped apple, two chopped Bell peppers, two chopped jalapenos, two chopped tomatillos, the last of both my raisins and craisins, the remains of two very spicy salsas, half a jar of basil-y tomato sauce, a bunch of chopped mushrooms, a chopped half of a large white onion, three small chopped red onions, five chopped cloves of garlic, and, for the hell of it, some chopped ginger.
Once that was boiling in earnest, I tossed in two packets of ramen noodles (gotta get rid of them somehow) and a bunch of diced cherry tomatoes. After the noodles were cooked, I turned off the heat and added the flavor packets, and stirred. Done! And now I have enough stew until Christmas break. Wow.
I've had it both hot and cold so far, and though I suspect that it may be too spicy for anyone with actual tastebuds not burned off long ago by a salsa-chugging habit (read: anyone but me) I found it quite tasty. I forgot to get cheese to melt on top, but so far I like it without anyway.
Well, back to the grind.

Code 21 was a success! We got an excellent audience, our playwright was in tears and hugged all of us, and I got to do an awesome monologue that freaked out everyone. Good times! But now that's over, and all that's left is the cast party.
Strike (dismantling the set) for Tartuffe was yesterday, and was really fun until, as I was trying to pry out small nails with a diagonal end cutter, my hand slipped and ( cut for those like me who are phobic of things happening to fingernails )
Anyway, I need to head on over to my sketch comedy's publicity stunt, 24 Hours of Reading Erotic Fan Fiction, so we can all finish it up together. (Ah, dammit, that sounded like innuendo, didn't it? All the erotica is warping my mental processes. I pulled a six hour shift for it last night.) I admit I was kind of wary at first, because I was afraid it would turn out to be a bunch of people going, "Hahaha slash! Silly fans making straight men gay for no reason and being stupid!" But as it went on I realized that while I was the only one in the troupe who regularly reads and writes fanfic (or even knows what it is), the people who respoonded to our advertisements were fanfic readers/writers too, and were making fun in good fun. And even though we've been mostly reading crack!ships like Hogwarts/Giant Squid or F/Q (literally the letters 'F' and 'Q'--it was a Sesame Street fic) and Fred Weasely/George Weasely/Lance Bass, there was still this atmosphere of enjoying being able to get together and openly read and enjoy smutty fanfic, and...just sort of an air of understated community, I guess. Like, "Hmmm...so these are the other people on campus who like fic..."
Looking forward to break! Got so much stuff to do (yes, including fanfic. Also should probably get started on the Secret Santa).

Life is craziness. Time for a posting break!
So today as I was painting a flat in my Tech Theatre class, I suddenly remembered something: striking the set of Tartuffe is this weekend. Six hours.
...in addition to three performances of Code 21, in which there is actually one scene I am not in; typing up a paper for my fellowship leader; rewriting a story for creative nonfiction class; all my regular homework stuff; and trying to get down to Goodwill to get myself a coat with a goddamn working zipper (broke mine this morning. Am freezing.) All this weekend.
This plus the things I have to do this week: register for spring semester classes, catch up on my exercise, clean my room, finish a huge Tech Theater drafting project, revise my word list for my linguistics course, attend rehearsals for two different shows every day.
I'm horrible about biting off more than I can chew, but even I had to admit that this was insane, and that what would be even more insane would be to insist that this weekend was a perfect time for my friends to come up to visit me. So I had to break our pre-Thanksgiving tradition, because that would just not have been fun for any of us. *sad face* Oh well. It'll be Christmas break before I know it, and I'll get to see them then. And there's always next year.
So, poll! Where should I have my actual Thanksgiving dinner?
A) The house of my awesomely crazy Trekkie former acting professor who always invites all of her students past and present, because there will be people I know?
B) The house of my (mostly unknown entity because we don't have a lot of common interests but she seems nice) current fellowship seminar professor who always invites all of her present students, because I should be forming tighter bonds with the other people in the fellowship?
C) The dorm lounge/kitchen of whichever of my friends are staying on campus, because I haven't hung out with them in forever?
Also, I don't know if my housemates and landlady are staying or leaving for Thanksgiving, which gives me two more options:
D) Here, because I should hang out with my housemates and landlady more often, especially since I keep missing all our weekly dinners for rehearsal?
E) Here, because they'll all be gone and I'll get to make a fancy meal all by myself and have fun reading and watching TV shows on my laptop and not have to deal with humanity?

No, those two statements have nothing to do with each other, other than the fact that while I was eating breakfast this morning (which I cooked lasted night) I got another reminder of why it is a good idea for me to seal myself in a hermit cave and only interact with humanity over the Internets.
( cut because my bitchiness is longer than expected )
Anyway, cooking! I sauteed a bunch of veggies--tomatoes, tomatillos, jalapenos, onions, green peppers, garlic, mushrooms--in one pan while boiling the same mixture in another pan filled with a mixture of water, Tostitos salsa, and portabello mushroom salsa (why yes, I was making clean-out-the-fridge soup. How'd you guess?). Then I added some eggs to the mix in both and scrambled them with the veggies, then I mixed the two batches together. Had some this morning on hambassa, a type of East African bread I got from the halal grocery next to where I take my film lessons (side note: best cream cheese ever. Also, best mango drink ever. Mmmm.)and I must say, it was pretty damn good. Definitely better than my cactus soup, which I think proves that I will always fail at recipes. Improvisation forever!

I have a major! Yay!
I actually found out yesterday morning, but the committee still had some things they wanted to clear up, so I decided to wait until I knew they weren't going to snatch it away (it's an individually designed interdepartmental major, which is why it took so long to get approved) to post here to keep from jinxing it. :)
Anyhoo, it's Comparative Narrative Forms and Techniques. (Which is admittedly a mouthful and a half, but all of my academic advisors and recommendation letter writers had their own opinions on what it should be. The major, not so much, they were mostly cool with that. But the name! It kept having to be revised to encompass more things/fewer things/things with slightly different connotations.) It combines English, Theater, and Media Studies, mostly focusing on writing: basically, the way stories are told across different mediums and how they transition/translate between mediums. I am going to have the coolest senior project ever!!! (Fall semester I get to take a story I've written and make it into a script; spring semester I get make a film of it or make it into a show.)
Eee! So excited!
Okay, back to slowly drowning in work now.

So I was procrastinating at geekpadshow.com, and oh my god, AWESOMENESS:



I particularly like the Goren and Eames one. Partly because it's Goren and Eames, but mostly because: heh.
Edit: Whoops, looks like you need to click on it to be able to actually read them.

Holy fricative mother of Roddenberry, I cut myself off from LJ for a week and USA Network decides to increase its fuckuppery by approximately 3000%. I have just one thing to say: "WHAT THE FUCKING HELL ARE THEY SMOKING, THE GODDAMN FUCKTARDS!?"
...
Okay, I actually have more things to say.
First off: I am not against the idea of Eames (or any of the characters, really, but Eames seems to be the one people are most worried about) being killed off per se. I have killed her (and others) before, and I'll kill them off again. Granted, it's different when it's canon, but still--I'm an angst whore. An angst junkie. It's why I got into the show. And while the thought of Eames coughing up blood, her brown eyes shining in pain and then dulling as she fades away forever, and the subsequent thoughts of Goren, slumped at his desk as if broken, staring at her empty chair and knowing it will never be filled, his face crumpled and frozen in grief as his eyes stare into the cold, empty future...what was I saying? Oh, yeah. While picturing all that is making me want to scream and shout and throw things and swear and rant and punch the wall and take a few days off college to set the USA Network Headquarters on fire--it is also giving me a wicked angst high. Mmmmm. Oooooh. Ooooh yeeeaaaah. Mmmm. That's the good stuff.
ON THE OTHER HAND BEFORE I AM SUMMARILY EXECUTED, I love Alex Eames. If she is going out, I want her to go out right, godmotherfuckingdammit. So while I am not against the idea of her dying per se, I am deeply, deeply, deeply, irrevocably against the idea of her dying under the care of these writers. Because these writers pretty much killed the show. I mean, it didn't help that D'Onofrio was asleep almost all season, but you know what else didn't help? Shitty, shitty scripts. And I just know they're going to fuck up her death. And sure, Goren will be crushed in that particular episode (he woke up for "Lady's Man, so I'm pretty confident he'll want to do well for Erbe this time too), but when they have Goren's guest-star appearances, they probably won't mention her at all, and it'll be like she never existed, because THEY SUCK LIKE THAT. SO. GODDAMN. HARD.
Sorry, Ross, I've actually liked you for over a year now, but I'm rooting for you to die. It's not as dramatically satisfying as Eames dying, but since that probably wouldn't be dramatically satisfying anyway, because of the WRITERS OF DOOOOOOM, it's up to you to keep this episode from being a total disaster. Be brave.
P.S. USA Network, I have accepted the fuckery you apparently wish to inflict on my beloved show. I realize there is nothing I can do to change this. So please, I ask of you just one thing: a hug. Goren and Eames need to hug it out. Seriously. Can you at least give me this?
Well, back to handing out candy whilst dressed as a Shiny New Australia (it's a Dr. Horrible reference). I wish I had extra candy to give the kids dressed as sci-fi stuff, to reward their good taste. (As soon as I finished typing that sentence, the doorbell rang and I ran out of candy.) Or the guts/meanness to say to some (older) kids, "That's not a costume, that's a sweatshirt, no candy for you until you get an imagination." Also, parents of the elementary school kid who let him dress of as a...I don't know what, but something heavily referencing Guinness? PARENTING FAIL.

Okay, it's midterm time, Daystar. You know what you must do. Suck it up.
As soon as you click post, you may no longer visit:

Livejournal
Fanfiction.net
Television Without Pity
Facebook
Psychotic Letters From Men
Why Women Hate Men
Overheard Everywhere
Overheard in New York
Overheard in the Office
Overheard on the Beach
Smugopedia
Fmylife.com
Comics Curmudgeon
Geekpadshow
Pearls Before Swine
Amorous Intent
Adultfanfiction.net

...okay, I think those are all the sites you use to procrastinate. You want to procrastinate now, you'll have to do it the old-fashioned way, by reading The New Yorker and sleeping.

On the bright side, after mid-terms is fall break! I'm going to try to update MVAD and maybe do a one-shot too. Either "Rebound Guy" (post-ep to 'Lady's Man') or 'Middle of the Night' (sequel to hargie's "They'll Never Know").

So I'm editing this poem "The Bubble Manifesto," which I wrote about a year ago, for a poetry slam and I've lopped off about the first minute of it. It doesn't really add anything. But do I need to add something in its place to clarify exactly what kind of bubble I'm talking about? Or is it clear?
Also: The repetition of "I want a bubble." Overdone?
Plus, you know, any other thoughts you might have would totally be welcome.

( The Bubble Manifesto )

In other news, though I believe Mary Sues are the devil, every single time I watch Full Metal Jacket I want to write a self-insert fic just so I can give Pyle a great big hug and take him away with me.
Also, I think I can do Vectorworks now! Yay!