starlingthefool

If you are looking for fic, all my recent stuff is posted up at AO3, all my earlier stuff (pre 2009) is on my fic index. The fic index also has links to all the original writing I've posted on this journal., which is 99% f-locked.
( Friending policy, or rather, my lack thereof )
( Things you should know about me. )

Kristin Wiig was some kind of Old West widow, whose mine was under attack from greedy townsmen, who wanted to own its silver or whatever.

The new sheriff, whose spirit animal was some kind of deadly red snake, could talk to the wind when it blew out of the southwest. He killed the bad guys, saved her, even though they totally didn't like each other at first.

There were a lot of Kill Bill moments. Including a fight above a lake with a lot of flying kicks.

Kristin Wiig and the sheriff, who was played by an alternating cast of Adam Sandler, Nathan Fillion, Robert Downey Jr., and a bookstore owner I know, fell in love and became outlaws together.

There was a really awkward pegging scene that involved a giant orange dildo, and RDJ calling out instructions like they were dance steps.

Then Agron wandered over, and apparently he was the sheriff's BFF, and they had decided to lead some kind of popular uprising. He was all, "God, you guys are fucking again?"

The sheriff introduced him as his best friend. Agron was all, "I'm glad someone remembered me."

MEANWHILE this was all being narrated by some random dude in a bookstore, who was choosing plot points by looking at different book covers. Included the phrase "There were forces building against them, including these guys, who shot the shit out of North America." Then he held up a book with some men on the cover, who did indeed look like they had totally shot the shit out of North America.

I woke up endlessly amused and needed to share.

I am having one of those boringly busy months. There have been a few bright spots -- like gollumgollum's visit, in which I was either drunk or hungover or in a food coma 75% of the time, and watching more SPARTACUS with an online crew of awesome people. Other than that, I've been working, writing, and doing silly things like signing up for martial arts classes. Woo.

Have some fic.

Title: Fundamental Imperfection
Fandom: Merlin
Wordcount: 12,176 (I KNOW)
Summary: It's an AU! Where they're both moderately famous writers! And they have a lot of literary arguments and feelings!

"Tell us a love story, and give it a happy ending."

Today, I woke up in a bad mood.

Seriously: I woke up, saw that it was still another half and hour before my alarm was set to go off, and thought This is already bullshit.

I expected the rest of the day to follow accordingly, (i.e. try to push me to homicide before nightfall) and to some extent it did. The kitchen was (is) too messy to deal with, Spartacus: Vengeance wouldn't load on my laptop, my bus was late. But people kept being weirdly cool to me all day. I had funny and nice customers at the store, my boss was awesome, the lady that served me my sandwich at Potbelly's joked around with me.

It was like the universe was trying to remind me that things weren't all bad, which just kind of made me crankier. Sometimes, I just want to wallow in my misery, okay? Stop bringing me adorable children that are really excited about Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Anyway. This feels weirdly like a post that should go on Tumblr.

So, this has been a week.

First, I finally listened to gollumgollum and watched Weekend. It was the second most heartbreaking thing I'd ever watched, and I loved it, and texted k8 throughout the whole thing because otherwise I'd have exploded from all the feels.

Then, because I apparently wasn't done emotionally wrecking myself, I went to go see The Hunger Games. ( Hunger Games blabber )

In between tearing my heart to shreds, I've been keeping busy. I got a full-time job at another bookstore. Upside: indie bookstore! full health insurance! not in a train station! Downside: 45 minute commute to the suburbs. Ah, well.

I also went on a date. There was queer folk music and gross cheap beer and cuddling and a couple quick kisses on the train. (Awkward, but I couldn't stay the night.) Today, there was a not-really-a-date, wherein she brought me ice cream and laid on the couch with me.

Why the ice cream, you may ask? That was the other thing I did this week: went to the dentist, found out I had a partially impacted wisdom tooth, and got it pulled today. Goodbye wisdom tooth, hello bloody hole and soft food for the next few days. If anybody needs me, I'll be here with my congee and popsicles and misery. Send fic. Or movie/TV recs.

Things I have learned about Chicago since I moved here:
1.) Worst drivers ever.
2.) People really love to talk about the weather.

Granted, the weather here is usually doing something weird. Like yesterday, it was 80 degrees (26 Celsius). I have a sunburn on my shoulders. My roommate's boyfriend had a barbecue.

Whereas last year at this time, there was still a foot of snow on the ground. Chicago: inspiring continuous commentary on weird weather.

So! Things have happened! I went to Vermont, and I didn't run into my ex. Granted, I didn't go to any of the places where we used to hang out. No, I stayed at home, ate good food, and went on walks with my mother. I watched a bunch of Merlin with my sister, because I really like watching Colin Morgan cry. I also didn't write a thing, which was a nice break. Now I'm back to writing articles, thinking about making a website for myself (ugh, DNW), and rewriting the first 10k words of gay superhero story, because of reasons.

Also, a meme from gollumgollum! Comment to this post with RENNER'S GUNS COLIN MORGAN'S TEAR-FILLED FACE, and I will list seven things I want you to talk about. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

1.) Phil Ochs
My sister got me into Phil Ochs when I was, I think, seventeen. The first song I ever heard was Pretty Smart on My Part, which is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. Then I listened to some of his less terrifying music, and fell in love. Ochs just wanted to be Woody Guthrie, but his idealism killed him in the end. Well, that and being bipolar and depressed.

2.) redwoods
So, I like trees. I am, in fact, a tree-hugger. (Literally, I like hugging trees. I feel no shame over this.) REDWOODS ARE AMAZING. And their bark smells really good. Though not as good as Ponderosa pine bark, which actually smells like butterscotch. TREES = <3

3.) flights of fancy
I was hanging out with a three year old last night, and we went around rescuing invisible baby opossums that were all named P-Dove. Then we talked about dinosaurs and the time her dad dug a hole to China.

4.) pop
What people call soda if they're from the midwest.

5.) helicopters
I don't like seeing helicopters, but if given the chance, I would probably love to ride around in them.

6.) dancing
My roommate and I were discussing nostalgic dance tunes. His were Aaliyah and Usher, mine were early 90's Madonna and Whitney Houston. My music taste is so gay sometimes.

7.) magnet
So, I have this slight thing about refrigerator magnets. And by "thing", I mean "unironic love for". The refrigerator at my mother's house is still littered with ones I bought or ones that were bought for me. I recently bought one for my sister that had a picture of Spock on it and the words "Ladies love a sharp-eared man." One of the only things that I don't like about my apartment is that the front of the refrigerator is made of non-magnetic metal. We tape things up there, but it's not the same.

Sleep is amazing. Seriously. That is the lesson I've learned this week.

Apologies for the last post. I'm still upset that my ex doesn't want to see me, but nothing like the epic-scale mope of Friday. I'm getting better at dragging myself out of dark moods; seeing friends, writing, watching good things (currently on an Avatar: The Last Airbender kick), baking, and cleaning seem to be fail safe methods of getting myself out of self-hating headspace. Also helping: making plans to go to Montreal and eat terrifying Sichuan food with my sister and mother.

Even more helping: an email from dailysciencefiction.com saying that they'd like to publish a short story I submitted to them.

!!!!

I've already called my family and screamed at them, and texted my roommate/wife and gollumgollum and capslocked at them, and so now it's your turn, LJ/DW.

I'M GETTING PUBLISHED AND OH YEAH THEY'RE A PAID MARKET, SO I GET MONEY LIKE A PROFESSIONAL OR SOME SHIT.

I GET MONEY FOR WORDS I YANKED OUT OF MY BRAIN. THIS IS AWESOME.

I think I'm gonna go treat myself out to breakfast.

High points of this week:

-getting paid to write a 6000 word ebook about, of all silly things, Anthony Bourdain's The Nasty Bits.
-going out with my (former?) coworkers last night.

Low points:

-aforementioned facebook dramaz
-today's (epic) hangover
-getting a text from my ex saying she'd rather not see me when I'm in Vermont

Most of today was spent on the couch in pretty abject misery. I mean, aside from the shakes and the stomach blah and the dizziness, I'm super bummed about my ex. I respect her decision -- she cited the last time I visited, which was absolutely great until I, you know, left again, and then we were both kind of miserable. (Her more than me, I think, because I am kind of an asshole like that.) She doesn't want to go through that again.

Cue enormous moping on my part. It sucks that I can't be what someone needs in a relationship.

Also, I just KNOW we're going to run into each other, because Vermont isn't actually a state, it's just one small town that's spread out over three hundred or so miles.

Damn you, Facebook.

So my ex, whom I'm still friendly with, posted up an article calling out Dan Savage's It Gets Better campaign for being myopic and more than a little handwavey when it comes to race politics.

First: I don't hate on the It Gets Better project. It started a conversation, it got people to pay attention, and it brought in a lot of attention to projects that actually support queer folks, like The Trevor Project.

Second: I agree with the article my friend posted. Dan Savage has done some very real things for the queer community, not limited to IGB. He is, however, a privileged white gay man who says some seriously ignorant shit. Like his whole stance on bisexuals (don't get me started), his free use of fucked-up language, the way he basically blamed black people for the passing of Prop 8. I could go on, but I've already devoted most of my morning to this.

I don't like Dan Savage. I think he's an ass, and I wish he hadn't somehow become America's pundit in regards to LGBTQ matters. I think it's right that people, especially other queers, critique him. And I said as much in comments on Facebook, which was dumb, because opinions are like assholes, everyone has one, and FB is basically one big farting match.

Now I am in such a farting match, and it's unfortunately with a friend who is sort of a queer ally? But also suffers from the same kind of liberal myopia that Dan Savage does. And now I'm all triggered because I just had to pull some kind of ARGUMENTATIVE SMACKDOWN maneuver regarding bisexuality and oh my god, I need more fucking tea. I'm pretty sure half the message that I just sent this friend was permutations of the word "fuck".

So, I was looking through my search history on wikipedia, and found that someone had looked up something called "pearly penile papules". (Link is NSFW, surprise.)

Which, besides being a hilarious name for a bluegrass band, is kind of awesome looking, in a weird penis-frond kind of way.

HI INTERNET, I MAY HAVE EATEN TOO MUCH NUTELLA TODAY.