a fool's musings

Fool, said my muse to me, look in thy heart and write...

Warning: Adult Content achromatic unfinished fic graveyard recs journal new stuff recent stuff my back pages January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002 January 2002 December 2001 November 2001 the five Ws, or, all about me profile e-mail victoria my livejournal the original P&R comments current mood: "pathological and unbalanced" Items of Interest People LiveJournal folks Baraita bishclone claritylit Jintian Kat Allison Kit Mason metablog mix-tapes Neil Gaiman Nestra Sarah T. Seema Shrift Sundry Mourning zendom Music Walk On - U2 Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen If I Can't Change Your Mind - Sugar Sick of Myself - Matthew Sweet Town Called Malice - The Jam One - U2 The Space Between - DMB Books Lord of the Rings Catch-22 The Neely Trilogy Absalom! Absalom! Possession: A Romance Foucault's Pendulum Dreamhouse LA Confidential I Capture the Castle Sandman Waking the Moon Shows Angel Buffy the Vampire Slayer (in reruns) Alias West Wing The Simpsons webrings < ? fanfiction ! > < ? writers ! > diaryreviews.diaryland.com NYC Bloggers Comments by Haloscan.com all links, if I haven't screwed up somehow, should open in a new browser window

2002-01-02 - 10:42 p.m. Pleasingly aromatic Okay, Consanguinity has gotten me probably the most feedback ever, or at least since Untouchable Face or Harbor in the Tempest. Both of which were much longer, multi-part stories. Who knew incest/comedy was the way to go? So I'm freshly showered, and the new soap I'm using lathers up black. It's like a leopard print soap. I can't figure out what the scent is supposed to be. I'm not even sure if I like it. I'm very nose-centric, as someone I used to know called it. I have a very sharp sense of smell, and I tend to judge people by *how* they smell. I guess it makes up for the nearsightedness and the hearing loss, eh? Though the hearing loss is self-inflicted. What? I'm addicted to my walkman. Two months of no tunes nearly *killed* me, though I got a ton of writing done on the commute. Anyhow, I have a big weakness for girly, smelly soaps and shampoos. Right now, I've got a minty fresh shampoo and a flowery one, plus this leopard soap [the Flaming Icecube is a great website, btw - http://www.flamingice.com I believe], a triple berry shower gel and a grapefruit/lemony shower gel. Yeah. Make all the comments you want. I am wonderfully and pleasingly aromatic. In a good way, not in a "No one sits near me on the subway" way. Though that might not be bad, considering some of the people I commute with. *g* I've really got nothing to say here. I'm just wasting time. I should be working on Consumption. Or Time's Fool. Or the Cruciato fic. Or the foofy fic I'm going to write for Beth. Or possibly something else entirely. I don't know! GAAAH! ::vic's head explodes:: Okay. Back now. Contemplating chocolate. And my new diaryland addiction. I did do something productive tonight, though. I updated "In Their Own Words" and the Resources page on Unfit, as well as getting Consanguinity up. So not a totally wasted evening, though I've made no dent in my email load. Sigh. Buona notte... off to answer email. ~victoria [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ 2002-01-02 - 3:00 p.m. Posted Consanguinity Okay, just posted Consanguinity, aka, the incest fic. Practically *begged* for flames. Let's see what the response is. I'm not *trying* to be controversial. I mean, the story *does* explain my deep-seated loathing of the L/J pairing in any 'verse, and that's the main reason I wrote it - for me. But I'm just interested in seeing what, if any, reactions it garners. I'll let you know. I'm sure you're waiting with bated breath. *g* ~victoria [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ 2002-01-02 - 10:45 a.m. Rice balls and hetsquick Couple of facts on rice balls, so you don't get taken in by bad imitations: They are not made with saffron rice. They do not have peppers in the rice. They do not have peas in the center. They are about the size of a small fist or possibly a hardball, *not* a softball and *not* a golfball. These are all pale imitations made by people who obviously don't know the real thing. Rice balls should only ever have meatball, ricotta, mozzarella or some combination thereof, in the center. Hope this helps. Accept no substitutes and let your local pizzeria or Italian deli know if they're doing it wrong. Okay, to totally change the subject, here's something I've been running into lately that I Just. Don't. Get. Hetsquick. Now, the fact that there's actually a name for it tells me that it's not a new or rare phenomenon. The thing is this, a great deal of slash is written by women. If the hetsquick business [and I'm defining it as abhorrence of heterosexual relationships in fanfic, pan-fandom] was anti-male, I still wouldn't *like* it, but it would make an odd sort of sense. I mean, women writing f/f slash [and hereafter referred to as femslash to distinguish from m/m slash, which, for some strange reason, is still the default meaning of "slash" - and more on that some other time, I think] and being squicked by men or women with men - I could see that. That's interfering in the sisterhood or blowing the Sapphic vibe or whatever. But this demonization of women, this disgust at everything female - to the point in some fandoms where MPreg is a fairly common thing [or so I've heard. I have very few squicks, but that's one of 'em. It's not a squick so much as a, "What are you, stupid?" kind of reaction along with an immediate and instinctive reach for the delete key. And let's not get started on the misogyny inherent in taking away childbearing from women. Women's roles in society have been defined - for good or ill (and mostly ill, but that's another rant) - since the beginning of time by the ability to bear children. You can't just *ignore* that because you don't want to play with the girls.] is something that baffles me. Aside from the sheer misogyny of it, which stuns me among women in this day and age [you think we've come a long way, baby? I beg to differ if women are still reacting to each other like this], is the plain *badness* that infiltrates the writing. Okay, maybe the writing itself isn't bad, but if there's this specter hanging over it, this shadow of "I hate Scully/Jean/Lana/Hermione/Amidala/whoever" that comes through in the men discussing the women in their lives, or the *narrator* discussing the women, or the complete absence of these women, that makes it utterly unreal and unbelievable. Yes, you can set up a situation where Logan and Scott are stranded with no women about, and they get it on etc. But you have to deal with Jean if you want your story to be more than a one-off PWP. Jean is an integral figure in their relationship, the thing over which they've had the most friction for the past 30 years in comics canon. Even if you go movieverse, the apparent main bone of contention between the two men is Jean. Even if you read the bedroom scene - and the deleted "wear this" scene - as UST between the two men instead of just a pissing contest over Jean, you *still* have to deal with the fact that Scott and Jean are a couple (engaged, because she *does* wear a ring on her left hand, even if nobody mentions it outright). A man just doesn't slough off his fiancée like so much extra weight when he meets a man he likes. Not if he's a good man who actually has a soul and a conscience. If he *does* do that, he's not the Scott Summers I know and love, and I don't want to read about him, and I certainly don't want him to be the main character in a fic, unless I'm *supposed* to have nothing but contempt for him. If he ditched his fiancée for another woman in that same sitch, everyone'd be all up in arms about it, though again, most of the blame would probably fall on the woman, since fanficland has apparently never heard of men taking responsibility for the trouble their johnsons get them into, and is still stuck in some 19th century "boys will be boys and it's all good clean fun" morality where it's the woman who gets branded a fornicator or an adulteress and the man gets off scot-free with a laugh and a reputation burnished by another notch on his bedpost. Mulder and Scully have been partnered for 8 years or so. They now have a child together. You can't excise her from his life without leaving a big gaping hole that needs to be explained. And so on. So those are the fictional, surface reasons that the women in these characters' lives need to be at least mentioned or their absences explained in some way. But deeper than that is this whole abhorrence of the idea of het fic. I don't get it. People who write slash tend to spout a whole boatload of crap about transgression and subversion and a whole lot of other things that yes, I believe to a degree [though they're not my personal reasons for writing slash. I'm of the "if one hot boy is good, two hot boys is better" school of thought], but I also think are often tacked on at the end. So why this absolute squeamishness and disgust with the female body? Me, I think it's got a lot to do with media and the culture we've got that says a woman is only beautiful if she's 5'9 and 100 lbs, blonde and blue eyed, shaved and primped and made up to within an inch of her life, and god forbid she smell of anything other than baby powder or Chanel No. 5. She can't sweat and she can't grunt and she sure as hell can't have hair in places the might make men think... what? That's what I don't get. If a woman has hair on her legs or under her arms, are men going to think she's a man? And that's speaking as someone who does shave [though I don't wax. I might have a higher pain threshold than some people, but I've never been able to inflict the pain on *myself* with any equanimity and the one time I tried to wax, it hurt like hell, so I didn't. I do like having my eyebrows waxed though. Something comforting in the heat and the sting.]. And though I started shaving to fit in and to comform to the idea that women should have smooth legs and pits, I've continued because it's too damned itchy not to. And also because it feels much nicer than stubble. But that's what happens - you get caught at 12 or 13 and then, if you're like me - you get stuck with it forever, because it's uncomfortable the other way. And this has strayed far into TMI territory, so... [ooh, they're playing Better Things on the radio now. I love this song. For those of you playing along at home, that was the answer to quote #2 from yesterday. *g*] Anyhow, we're socialized to believe our bodies are gross and disgusting, and I think *that's* what's finding its outlet in this hetsquick business. Because I'm willing to bet real gay men don't sit around thinking about how gross women are and how grateful they are not to have to deal with them. I'm thinking that being a gay male pretty much precludes thinking of women's bodies much at all, except as possible clothes hangers, and maybe baby makers. That's not to say gay men are objectifying women or whatever. I think they're probably much better at *not* objectifying women, simply because they're not interested in *scoring* with women. But I'm not a gay man. What the hell do I know? I am a woman, and I do write slash, and that's why I'm baffled. Admittedly, my main pairing is het, but I can slash almost anyone [except, apparently, LotR characters *g*] but even when I do that, I allow the women to have some sort of presence [even if they're all dead. See "Alive and Dying"], and I *deal* with them. Hell, even in the Logan/Scott PWP series, I wound up having to have Scott justify what he's doing, because it *is* cheating, even if it's with Logan, and he's *Scott*. He's a pillar of moral rectitude, or he *tries* to be. To have him blithely ignore his conscience so he can fuck someone while he's still in a relationship is *wrong* on so many levels. I'm not saying he won't do it. Not at all. I'm just saying he wouldn't do it lightly, or without a lot of angsting on his part [even if we don't see it, it should be indicated that he's thought long and hard about what he's doing and what it'll do to his relationship with Jean, even if they've broken up]. Anyhow, I don't think I've resolved this issue even in my own mind, and I don't think I've articulated it well at all, except for the main point, which is: Hetsquick. I. Just. Don't. Get. It. I guess that's all for now. ~victoria [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ 2002-01-02 - 12:03 a.m. grr html damn html. stupid unordered list tags. grr. arrgh. Sorry if things have looked odd the last little bit, if anyone was here. Had a little html mess. I made it, and I cleaned it up. I think. ~vic [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ 2002-01-01 - 11:53 p.m. megalomania and Alice So as the first day of a new year goes, this one was pretty innocuous. *g* Stumbled across this on Amazon this evening: "Books I always recommend" by shoe715 [that would be me, for those of you who don't know]. Click here to see it. I was searching for a book I love, that is somewhat hard to find - Dreamhouse by Alison Habens. It's about this woman Celia and her engagement party, and how things just go down the rabbithole for her. If you're an Alice in Wonderland fan [which I am, terribly - I had a three-month period a few years ago where I couldn't get *away* from Alice references. It was spooky.], you'll probably get a huge kick out of this book. Anyhow, I have an Amazon gift certificate and I'm pondering how to spend it. Buckaroo Banzai is out on DVD - that's definitely a possibility. And Mad Max is out in a special edition, with the original Aussie soundtrack instead of the stupid dubbed Merkin version. I could get Road Warrior too. Love that movie. Love it. LOVE IT! I prefer not to discuss Thunderdome. *g* Hmm... I have some fannish thoughts to share, but I'm still mulling over various discussions I've seen in the past few days, so maybe by tomorrow I'll have stuff sorted out enough to write about. And get myself into trouble, no doubt. Heh. I didn't think people were reading this, but you are. Oh yeah. Love me, baby. It's my first step in taking over the world. *g* megalomaniacally, ~victoria [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ 2002-01-01 - 3:40 p.m. Confessions of a fic writer "It's been a long December and there's reason to believe that maybe this year will be better than the last..." Yeah, I'm reduced to quoting lyrics again. Actually, a very useful habit for encapsulating feelings that I often can't articulate... as in "I know you've got a lot of good things happening up ahead, the past is gone it's all been said, so here's to what the future brings. I know tomorrow you'll find better things." So, confessions of a fic writer: I didn't find LotR slashy at all. Certainly didn't see the Sam/Frodo slashy goodness I expected. It's there in the books, sort of. I mean, Frodo never struck me as very sexual at all, and Sam was always on the verge of tears, but there was all that, "Anything you want, Mr. Frodo" business. But in the movie - Elijah Wood is a lot younger and prettier than I ever pictured Frodo, and too angelic-looking to be interested in a sexual relationship with anyone, let alone earthy Sam. Sam definitely gave off the "I love Mr. Frodo" vibe, but way more in a tender, motherly kind of way. So, no slash there for me, alas. Not that I was planning on writing any LotR slash anyway. I really can't picture any of them with each other. Maybe - and this is a big maybe - Aragorn and Legolas, but I want Legolas for myself [though I wouldn't kick Strider out of bed for eating crackers, lemme tell you], but I just didn't get a sexual or even really a sensual sense from any of the characters. I mean, on some shows or for some characters, it's there, it's just repressed, but I didn't even get a tingle of slashyness from these guys. They're [whoever the mysterious They is] going to revoke my slash-writing privileges if they get wind of this. *g* I need to see the movie again. Maybe then I'll see it. Or not. It's not really that important to me. I just want to salivate over Legolas and Aragorn. And even Boromir. Sean Bean... yum. He was great in the Sharpe's series. I just hope they do right by my Faramir. I think I've gotten Crisco all over the keyboard. I fried up the rice balls this after; since we didn't have them at midnight last night, we're having them for dinner. I have to work tomorrow. Everyone's back. I hate the end of the holidays. Sigh. Happy New Year! ~victoria PS: If you know where those two quotes come from [i.e., song and band], e me. *g* Maybe you'll get something nice in return. [current mood: ] [current music: ] [random quote: ] ~*~ previous - next DiaryLand Disclaimer: Reading this diary is not required by law. If you do not like or agree with the contents herein, or find them to be offensive on more than one occasion, please go elsewhere and don't come back. Management is not responsible for any adverse reactions to content within. The painting is "Boreas" by John William Waterhouse. Again, not a muse, but I like her. She suits the color scheme. The quote is from Sir Philip Sidney. This site is best viewed with IE4+ | 1024x768 | true color | verdana | tables