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

06.16.03 - 10:16 a.m. I didn't say it was an *original* song, just that it was new. Sort of. Ack! The saga of the signing continues. But I shall say no more here, as this is too public a place. Suffice it to say, the bitching I did last week? Not *nearly* enough. *** Yesterday was lovely. The weather held up, and was beautiful, so we could sit outside all day, thus negating the need for me to take benadryl. Or so I thought. For the first time *ever*, my sister let the cats outside with us. Even in the open air, my eyes got itchy and I threw out a few hives, and late last night I could still feel a vague and unsettling tightness in my chest. But it was better than being locked up in the house with them. Oliver did spend some time stalking me, because we all know he *knows* I'm allergic, and also a dog-person. Tricia was convinced that Oliver was their cat, Pepper, so all day she ran after him going, "Pepper! Pepper!" And everyone else would say, "No. Oliver." It was amusing. Well, I suppose you had to be there. When she wasn't chasing Oliver, she was feeding or staring at the fish. I may have mentioned that my brother-in-law built a koi pond in their backyard, and some of the fish in it have gotten *huge*. The catfish is the size of a small shark. Tricia loves the fish. She wants to sit on the railing and taunt them with her toes. She wanted to sing to them, to stop them from eating her, so we invented a new song: "I see the fish and the fish see me. The fish see somebody I wanna see. God bless the fish and God bless me and God bless the somebody I wanna see." I didn't say it was an *original* song, just that it was new. Sort of. You've gotta work with me here. She also managed to climb up into the trampoline without help, which we all took as a sign she really, really wanted to try it, and she did. She loved it. I, on the other hand, found the whole thing nausea-inducing. I like solid ground under my feet, not something that gives and sinks and bounces. The trampoline and I are not friends. We will never be friends. Yes, I am in a seriously jonesing for more Homicide mood. *g* Anyhow, dinner yesterday was like a Medley of Meat, with both sirloin tips and London broil, both of which were lovely and tender and marinated and, this is key, not overcooked. My b-i-l has a habit of overcooking the meat, which imo renders it practically inedible, but this was still pink and juicy and satisfying. We had ice cream cake for dessert, and then I went home (or, rather, back to the 'rents) and passed out at 10pm, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. All in all it was a great day, but obviously I'm not quite in summer shape yet, 'cause I didn't even go in the pool and I was wiped out. ~victoria link [current mood: amused] [current music: Stroke of Luck - Garbage] [random quote: \"I have yet to find a sure thing that I don't doubt / I can't think of a thing I can safely think about\"] ~*~ 06.14.03 - 11:45 p.m. My boys are so pretty! Pathetic Fallacy is up on the site. Sirius learns not to believe everything he reads. Well, I thought it was funny, anyway. And so did Remus. So nyah. Speaking of Sirius and Remus, look at what Rana made me: Aren't they gorgeous? *That's* how I picture them, and how I'd have cast them, had it been up to me. Alas, it was not. Sigh. We love Rana with great love for this. Anyhow, been fiddling with CSS and I'm just not getting something, because it doesn't work the way I thought it was supposed to. I must be missing some crucial line of code that automatically makes the background of the whole page the color I want, rather than just the background of the text. Meh. I have a book at home. I'm not going any further on this little project until I can be sure that it will take as little work as possible (well, as little as changing 305 pages can possibly be) and even *less* work going forward, should I ever want to change the colors again. Sigh. I'm the kind of person who learns by trial and error, with a little help from books, so I'm on the right track, at any rate. And you know, at around 3:30 this afternoon, I sat down at this computer to type up the Hufflepuff section of the Five Things fic, and I have still not typed one damn word. I am so silly. ~victoria link [current mood: amused] [current music: A Sort of Homecoming - u2] [random quote: and you know it's time to go through the driving snow across the fields of mourning lights in the distance] ~*~ 06.13.03 - 11:19 a.m. "it's ancient Greek for butthead" Sometimes, you just gotta amuse yourself. Pathetic Fallacy. Smoochies and a lesson for Sirius and Remus. I'm thinking I need a Bayliss/Kellerman icon. "Snarky?" "Yeah, snarky. It's ancient Greek for butthead." Speaking of Sirius and Remus (as I almost always am, these days, in my journals of obsession), So Many Monsters is up on the site. I really do need to get started if I'm going to do a redesign. I *want* to do it, simply because I want to get CSS on the site so I can easily change colors whenever I want, but as it stands now, I have over 200 stories (will count shortly and get exact number, as am geeky that way) {Edited to add: 236 stories as of So Many Monsters (including both Han/Logan and XMM/Seinfeld, neither of which are complete, and all the drabbles I've been writing)}, plus indices to recode (I think I'm gonna ditch the poetry page. Is embarrassing and no one reads it anyway, right?). I am *so* not a codemonkey, but I know it has to be done. And the new design is purty and easy on the eyes. Though I'm still not sure about changing the name from Muse's Fool. I suppose the new name could be a subtitle? I'll figure something out. I'm not changing the links, just the overall title. In other, less fun news, MT (my really laidback boss) is out today because a neighbor's tree was downed last night and fell across his (MT's) driveway -- crushing all *three* family vehicles. ::shakes head:: And I thought *I* had bad luck. Though, thankfully, nobody was hurt, and the house is okay. But can you imagine? MW says MT says he thinks all three are totaled. Man. And I don't know if insurance covers that - is it force majeure/Act of God stuff? 'Cause replacing three cars (one of them an Infiniti and one some sort of SUV, I believe) is gonna be *damned* expensive. Ah well, back to the Five Things fic, which is now tentatively titled "Where It Alteration Finds." Yes, I'm mining Sonnet 116 again. ~victoria link [current mood: snarky, amused, relieved] [current music: Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) - Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band] [random quote: And my machine she's a dud and I'm stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey] ~*~ 06.12.03 - 2:08 p.m. Where'd my funny go? *Squee* Just rode in the elevator with Cute Nebbishy Guy, and he's so hot. He's nebbishy, but also hot. ::whispers:: He plays hockey. *swoon* So he *looks* a little nerdy (balding, glasses), but he's also got the rrwowwr hockey player thing - I have a thing for V-backed men. Oh god yes. And then lunch. Mmmm... Is there anything better than a medium rare cheesesburger, hot and dripping, with mayonnaise and ketchup and raw onions? *sighs* I didn't think so. Oh, my inner carnivore is sated. It's funny how little meat I actually eat these days, but when the craving hits (once a week usually), man, does it hit. And since I'm still living fast-food free (i.e., no Mickey D's, no BK, none of it), I don't eat my fair share of grease anymore, and you know grease is one of the four food groups, along with sugar, beer and chocolate. I'm very, very tired. I'm trying to finish writing the Five Things fic and I know how it should go, in my head, but I'm having a hard time getting it on paper again. I mean, the Slytherin and Ravenclaw sections just wrote themselves. Gryffidor isn't being too ornery, but Hufflepuff? My god, Hufflepuff is killing me. I don't even think the mysterious fifth section is going to be as hard to write as this stupid Hufflepuff section. And it's the least-angsty one of them all! What is going on with me? Where'd my funny go? You'd think with Sirius and Remus - the Fandom of Delayed Gratification, as I like to call it (as opposed to a Fandom of Pain, like CLex) - I'd be able to get the fluffy, porny, post-war groove on, but no. I can't seem to write porn for them. It's all this introspective or angsty shit. What's *up* with that? Of course, I'm also sort of holding my breath until next week, not wanting to start anything major that'll get jossed so quickly. I don't mind stuff I've written already being jossed, but I hate when it happens *while* I'm writing. Throws me right off my game. Witness the stalled Josh/Donna. Sigh. I ate, now I wanna sleep, especially since it's so gray and humid today. Turned the AC on for the first time last night, because of that damned humidity. Makes it hard to sleep. Well, considering the caffeine from yesterday, even *harder* to sleep. *g* Caffeine and I go best in small, measured doses. ~victoria link [current mood: food coma'd] [current music: Crucify - Tori Amos] [random quote: got enough guilt to start my own religion] ~*~ 06.11.03 - 12:59 p.m. So Many Monsters, mach 1 My entry into the always pleasant "Sirius in Azkaban" subgenre. I'm not sure it's worth polishing up and posting, but it *is* a little different. I'm not sure that different=good, though. *g* I'm also not sure I've got the characters right. I think Delirium is okay, but Desire is a bitch. Oh, yes s/he is, and I think of all the Endless, Desire is the one who holds the most sway over Sirius. So any help/comments/suggestions would be appreciated. *** So Many Monsters I used to have demons in my room at night / desire, despair, desire / so many monsters He sees her the first time that day, in the street, as he’s being lead away. He’s laughing and she smiles at him, one green eye and one blue sparkling in the rare November sunshine. She reminds him of a girl he met at a club one night, multi-colored hair and ripped fishnets. She is talking to another woman, this one dark-haired and dressed in black. He shakes his head and laughs. He’s just seen his entire world destroyed and he’s perving on strange-looking women. They think he’s mad, and maybe he is. He sees her again, vague flashes from the corner of his eye, bright colors against the drab grey of the cell he’s been in for a week. He can’t quite get a handle on her, and he’s in no state to try. Locked up without a trial, he spends most of his energy trying to figure out how he’d been so very, very stupid. He wakes up one night from dreamless sleep and she’s there, sitting on the floor of his cell. Wild, multi-colored hair flowing past her shoulders, the green eye focused on him, the blue just... not. “I had a dog,” she says in a singsong voice. “Or, I will have a dog. A talking dog. Like you. Are you my doggie?” He blinks. “How--" “Now brown cow,” she finishes, and giggles. “I like the taste of blue and green, but not yellow. You’d think it’s sour, but it’s not. It’s just... yellow. It should be like tasting sunlight, but it’s all wrong. More like,” her brow furrows and he can feel the massive effort she makes to concentrate -- it radiates off her like heat, “dirt. Not good dirt, either. It’s sour, but not like lemons. Like grave dust.” He draws his knees to his chest and leans his head back against the wall, staring. “You’re not one of mine. Not yet,” she says, sounding suddenly sane, mismatched eyes focused on him and the force of that gaze startles him. “But you will be.” She skips to the door of the cell. “And we’ll have so much fun.” He will never be hers, he thinks. He is Remus’s and Remus is his. Remus will rescue him. Remus believes in him. He manages to hang onto that thought for almost a month, but no rescue comes, no friends appear. No one believes in him, and he’s finding it harder each day to believe in himself. Days turn into months turn into years and though he grows weaker, he still fights. He tries to horde the good memories -- James's laughter, Lily’s smile, holding Harry in his arms the first time -- but they are ripped from him, slowly but surely. He promises himself he will remember; that someday he will see their faces and feel joy. Even the thought of some future joy is enough to swamp him with guilt; he deserves this, because it’s all his fault they’re dead. If he had only *seen* instead of being blinded by jealousy... “Oh, lover, there’s no way you could have resisted.” The speaker is dark-haired, beautiful, and Sirius feels his body respond, a feeling so foreign to him now that it may as well be happening to someone else for all he understands it. “Who--" A white hand flutters, dismissing his question. “You know who. And I don’t mean that fool Voldemort.” He shivers at the name. “You wanted so much, so much,” the voice is soft as silk, husky, and the memories he’s avoided, the ones that hurt the most, flood his mind. Remus. The first day on the Hogwarts Express. The first smile, first prank, solidifying a friendship that survived everything but his own stupid jealousy “Yes. I owned you. You loved not wisely and not at all well. Poor, dear boy. You could have had you what you wanted most, but....” the voice trails off suggestively. He closes his eyes and sees Remus, laughing at his jokes, head bent over his homework, eyes glinting with mischief. He remembers the first secret stirring of desire, the first kiss... Remus’s sweet mouth calls him a liar, a murderer, a traitor. Remus knows he suspected him of being a spy. His voice is hard and cold when he accuses Sirius of not trusting him, never loving him. And Sirius has no response, because it's true, at least in part. He *did* suspect, and he *was* jealous. But the one thing he’s as sure of as his own innocence is his love for Remus, though he knows he’s not worthy of being loved in return. He tries to find the words, to tell Remus he did -- does -- love him and always has, but Remus turns away in disgust. If even Remus believes he's guilty, then nothing is worth fighting for He wakes from the nightmare, shivering and crying, unable to avoid the condemnation of the ghosts in his own head. Innocent, he tells himself. I am innocent. Guilty, the voices hiss, nothing but a liar. All your fault. He tries to fight the Dementors, but night after night, day after day of reliving his worst memories, having his best ones twisted and torn away, he’s barely hanging on. He’s long ago given up believing Remus will rescue him. Remus is too good for him. He deserves this. He killed James and Lily surely as if he’d given them to Voldemort himself. He learns he still has the power to transform into Padfoot, and his despair is lightened. He has no visions of strange women while a dog, no nightmares of beloved friends turning their backs on him for betraying them. He learns dogs are far less prone to despair than humans. But he can’t stay a dog forever. “You may as well give in,” she says one day. She is squat, plain, naked. He fears her more than the others combined. She scores her face with a hook and he is reminded of Remus, torn apart by the wolf every month, turning on his own flesh when denied human blood. He slumps, defeated. She’s right. There’s no escape, no place to hide. He’s exposed as the worthless, traitorous slime he is. “Yes, worthless,” she says. “Screw up, traitor, asshole. Everything you touch turns to shit. Just give in and stop fighting it.” Her flat, matter-of-fact tone is far worse than the shrieking and howling of his fellow prisoners, of the phantoms in his mind. He sinks into her embrace -- it's warm in the chill of his cell, lightless and comforting in its confirmation of what he’s been telling himself all these years. And then he sees the rats. She smiles, and it’s terrifying. “My pets,” she says proudly, and it all rushes back to him with a clarity that’s shocking after years of muzzy-headed grief. “I’m innocent,” he says. She shakes her head, but he insists, “I am innocent.” He melts into Padfoot and she’s gone, the rats are gone. But he knows. He is innocent. And he will not be fooled again. He remembers the rat, burns with hatred for Wormtail. The Dementors may take everything else but they cannot take this, and when he sees the picture or his enemy, his quarry, in The Daily Prophet, he knows his time is at hand. She’s waiting for him on the shore when he arrives, but he’s not scared of her any longer. She visits him, but she has no hold on his mind. She travels with him for a bit, chattering blithely, petting him and singing songs that human ears could never listen to with equanimity, but dogs are far less prone to delirium than humans. Her occasional insights cut through the nonsense and he wonders who she is, how she knows. I am innocent, he thinks. Wormtail is at Hogwarts and Harry is in danger. As long as he focuses on that, she cannot take him. “What’s the word,” she asks, “for that floating, weightless feeling after they take the pain away? The one that’s sharp and achy and good and free? And even if you don’t want it, people can still give it to you anyway, and eventually you just take it because it’s stupid not to?” Forgiveness. The word is forgiveness, he thinks, and for the first time in twelve years, he has hope. end *** Sigh. Yeah, that's the kind of mood I need to be in the get back to the Remus Five Things fic, which just... depresses me. Why can I not come up with a happy AU for my boy? Oh, and if anyone wants to beta this or the Remus Five Things fic, drop me a comment or an email. ~victoria link [current mood: artistic] [current music: Keep Your Hands to Yourself (?) - Georgia Satellites] [random quote: Love just makes you more of who you really could be.\" Donna Moss in The Tears of St. Lawrence, by Pix] ~*~ 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