i don't know about y'all, but i know about us

WIP Amnesty, woot!

Sat, 04 Feb 2006 03:13:29 GMT

So I usually can't bring myself to do wip_amnesty, because YOU NEVER KNOW. I MIGHT finish them! I really might. And there are indeed still a lot that I'm hoarding for my own use, but the chances of me getting to this one in the next ten years are vanishingly small, so -- Go with God, little AU! You would have been lovely when you grew up!

Easy Rider
the great unfinished AU
Chris/Justin, Lance/Nick, various other pairings

(note: I think some of the last scenes may not be ordered in the way I planned for them to be. It's hard to remember what I was up to, now, but I think I was in the middle of a lot of cutting and pasting)

::May::

"You got a light?" the kid in the parking lot asked Lance. Apparently that knit cap of his was pulled a little too low over his eyes, keeping him from noticing that Lance was trying to get a tray of coffee out of his car and into the store without bending the cardboard tray and losing any of the cups. Before Lance could say anything snide, though, the cardboard started to buckle, and the guy's hand was under it, lifting it safely to the roof of Lance's car before Lance could even react.

"Good reflexes," Lance said, fumbling in the pocket of his coat for a lighter. He didn't smoke, but since every other gay man in the world seemed to, Lance learned early that it never hurt to keep one on you. "Thanks."

"No problem." Lance got his first close look while he lit the kid's cigarette -- not as much of a kid as Lance first thought, his face fine-boned under the stubble, his body lean but not scrawny under his baggy clothes, the kind that were chemically treated to make them look naturally distressed and worn; Lance could guess at some of the labels. There was something familiar about him, too. If he'd just look up, instead of glaring at the pavement with his pretty mouth set in a frown, maybe Lance could place him. Nobody Lance had slept with, he didn't think; not his usual type, but even more tellingly, Lance couldn't imagine that he'd had that mouth on him and then forgotten about it.

He almost laughed aloud when he realized. Hell, no, nobody *he'd* ever slept with. Nobody he'd ever seen at all, except here and there, still glimpses in the glossy pages of People, in motion as Lance flipped past VH-1. Personally, Lance didn't care much for pop music, and his own radio dial rarely budged off Pittsburgh's one decent country station, but ever since Justin Timberlake had seemed to appear out of nowhere, sometime last winter, it was hard not to know who he was. Lance couldn't name any of his songs, but he did remember seeing that one video where he wiped his long-fingered hand deliberately across his mouth, and he remembered lazily fantasizing about what exactly he might be wiping off. Not Lance's usual type, but still, still.

"That's probably not good for your voice," Lance commented, gathering up his coffee carefully.

"Fucking *Pittsburgh!*" he burst out, which seemed like a strange response. Lance quirked his eyebrow. "Is there anyone in this goddamn town who doesn't want to tell me what to do? Because, yeah, I don't take enough orders in my line of work. I'm *always* looking for more people to fucking *tell me what to do.*"

"Hey, do whatever you want," Lance said.

"No, see. Look." He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket by its chain and opened it up for Lance. Sure enough, the driver's license said Justin Timberlake, state of Tennessee. Justin pushed on a card with his thumb so that it slid far enough free of the leather to show Lance the AmEx logo. "I'm making, for the first time in my fucking life, I'm making *money,* I can *buy* things if I want them, right? This is me, this is my card, there's a hundred grand limit, I could put a fucking *house* on this card, but all I want is a damn bike, you know? All my life, I didn't care about the money, you know, but this was the one thing I wanted for myself. And I did all this research, and I wanted to buy a really good bike at a decent price, and everybody said that this Kirkpatrick guy is the big fucking expert, and I come all the way out here, and he won't fucking sell me one! And I don't mean to be arrogant, but *hello!* I *have* the money, right, and what's *with* him, anyway? He acts like I'm not -- what, like I'm not *good* enough to even be in his little store, and...." Justin broke off and turned his head away sharply, squinting as if the sun were in his eyes, even though it was rainy and overcast. Lance had a horrible fear that he was about to start crying or something.

"You look very Julia Roberts right now," Lance said, which made Justin stop looking like he was going to cry and start looking like he was going to strangle Lance. "Well, not -- you know, in Pretty Woman, when she has her hands full of cash, and she's like, 'I have all this'-- Jeez, okay, I'm *sorry.* Here, you want to buy a bike?"

"Yes!" Justin yelled. "I want! To buy! A bike!"

"Good, okay, good. Look, I don't know what Chris said to you, but let me talk to him, okay? Obviously there's been some kind of misunderstanding, because you buy bikes, Chris sells them, and this should all really go a lot more smoothly than apparently it's going so far. He hasn't had his coffee yet. That's probably the only problem."

Justin looked at him suspiciously, as if he'd like to believe that Lance could solve his problems, but he'd been burned before. "You work here?"

"Yes. No. Well, no, sort of. I help with his books and stuff. I'm an accountant." In actual fact, he was probably the only person who'd touched Chris's accounts since the shop opened, and the person best suited to realize just exactly how stupid it was for Chris to be turning away customers. Small businesses never made money the first year, but Tricky's was going on five, and no further away from the edge of the financial cliff than ever before. "Here, can you...? I know he probably said something stupid to you, but you have to know Chris, he doesn't mean nine-tenths of what he says. I'm sure he didn't mean any harm, and I know -- he really *is* the best, he knows everything there is to know about things with motors in them, I swear. So if you want to just take -- please, take my card, and call me back this afternoon, and we'll get all this straightened out. He does custom work, he can put you on any kind of bike you want, the exact one you've always dreamed of. I promise. Just call, okay?"

"Okay," he said dubiously, but he put Lance's card in his wallet, right there behind his license. Lance wasn't normally a star-struck kind of person, but *seriously,* his card, right there in Justin Timberlake's wallet. Joey would flip when he heard about this.

"What the hell is the matter with you?" he said as soon as he got inside with the coffee.

Chris didn't bother to ask him what he meant. He didn't even look up from whatever delicate piece of gears and bolts he was disassembling on his work-table. "The boy does not need a bike."

"Well, of course he doesn't. He's rich and famous, he doesn't *need* anything. He's got nothing better to do with his life than buy diamond earrings and expensive motorcycles, and you're fresh out of diamonds around here. Hey, *listen* to me," he ordered, slapping Chris upside the head. Not that there was any point to that; Chris' head was built like an engine block.

Chris spun around on his stool, and Lance was startled by the lack of sparkle in his eyes; he looked as deadly earnest as Lance had ever seen him. "Think of it like this, Bass. In your neck of the woods, back in the day, a gentleman of quality would have a horse, right? And what would the neighbors think if he didn't know how to treat a fine, thoroughbred horse? They'd think he wasn't as much of a gentleman as all that."

"Okay, what are you talking about, Chris, seriously? These aren't horses, they're just machines."

"And that," Chris said, pointing between Lance's eyes, "is why I would never sell you a bike."

"I don't want one of your damn bikes. People get killed on those things."

"Good, because you can't have one," Chris said blithely, spinning back around to focus on his work. "Night and day, I work on these beautiful animals. The finest parts, the best quality service, I love them like members of the family. I'm not gonna just sell one to some shiny-toothed pretty boy who wants a toy for show-and-tell. He's just gonna ride it too fast, tear it up, and then get bored and leave it rusting out in the garage of the summer house."

Lance pressed the heels of his hands to his temples. "Fine, I don't care. I don't even care. It's your business, Chris, you're the one who supposedly loves the place so fucking much. Run it into the ground if you just have to, I don't *care* anymore. It's not my heart that's gonna be broken when it's gone and you have nothing left, including these thoroughbreds of yours."

"He's not ready. I can't do business with someone who isn't ready."

Lance opened his mouth, and closed his mouth, and thought about bludgeoning Chris' head in with a ratchet wrench, and thought about life without Chris, and sighed. Chris was the one who wasn't ready; Lance had known that since the very beginning, since against his better judgement he'd agreed to help Chris draw up a business plan for a bike shop. Chris didn't want to own a business, didn't want any responsibility or really any risk of failure. Tricky's was his Never-Neverland, his refuge from the real world, where somehow Chris Kirkpatrick -- who was whip-smart and funny and kind and handsome and genuine and loyal -- had never quite managed to fit in. There was just some vaguely off-kilter thing about him that people never seemed to *get.* It was pretty fucking unfair, as far as Lance was concerned.

And, more unfairness right on top of that, if Chris didn't batten down and start thinking about his bottom line, Tricky's was going to be one more thing that seemed like it was going to make Chris happy, right up until it let him fall hard. "Okay," Lance said. "Here's your coffee."

"Thanks, Bass, you Georgia peach, you."

"Mississippi," Lance reminded him, like always, and there was way too much sadness in Chris' dutiful little smile. Impulsively, Lance bent down and kissed his cheek, and Chris put up with it for a second, then leaned sharply away and wiped his cheek like a little kid. "I shouldn't have to be here long. I just want to go over a few invoices in the office."

The desk in Chris' office was the same one that had Lance's parents had bought for his first apartment, when he moved out of the dorms in his junior year, not too sturdy, but real oak, not plastic or fake, pressed Wal-Mart wood like most of the other furniture Lance had owned. Chris had helped his dad and Lance carry it up to the third floor, and all three of them ate Arby's and drank grape Gatorade among the boxes and the half-assembled furniture while the sun set right outside Lance's curtain-less living room window. When Lance walked his dad down to his car and hugged him goodbye, his dad said, "I like your friend."

"Chris is cool," Lance said. Chris painted houses for a living, and he had Steelers season tickets and a huge collection of classic rock on vinyl, and he was pretty much the only person Lance had ever met in a gay bar who turned out to be actually fun to talk to. Lance thought he was wasting his life, and wasting himself on his very hot and very not faithful younger boyfriend, who happened to be in Lance's astronomy lab and cut class a lot to go out tricking while Chris thought he was stargazing.

"You know you could bring him home to visit any time you want," his father said. "Your momma and I want you both to feel comfortable."

"Dad, he's not my-- " Lance began, and then found himself stuck and feeling ridiculous, because they didn't talk about this, they'd never talked about this. It didn't surprise him that his parents knew, of course, because they didn't miss much. Except that it *wasn't* like that with Chris. "Chris is just a friend. I just asked him if he'd mind helping me move."

"Oh," his father said, and then, "*Oh.* God. I'm sorry, I thought he -- that you were -- "

"*I* am," Lance said quietly, clenching his fists tight in his pockets. "But we're not. We're just friends."

"Well," his father said, and gripped his shoulder tight for a minute. "Well, you be careful on your own here. Study hard. Your momma and I love you."

"I know," Lance said. "Tell her I love her, too."

After that there had been real boyfriends, ones Lance did take home to meet his parents, and some fabulous fucks that he didn't. Chris finally broke up with his loser boyfriend, and for him there was a string of computer nerds with great senses of humor that Chris always dumped when they started asking when he was going to quit painting houses and start doing something he didn't hate for a living, and a string of pretty young things who always, always lied or cheated or drained Chris's bank account for as long as Chris would let them get away with it, and a married man or two, and a girl or two. Through it all, Lance thought their common bond had basically been furniture: all the times they'd helped each other move into better apartments, the time Chris had helped Lance sell off a deadbeat boyfriend's stereo system at twice the price they told deadbeat boyfriend it went for, all the nights Chris had spent on Lance's couch and the nights that Lance had crawled, sick of love or half-dead in tax season, into Chris's bed for the company, for the wonderful, sensual way that Chris would stroke his scalp and his throat like Lance was his overgrown pet until Lance fell asleep. The college desk that Lance offered him when he opened the shop.

Lance ran his hands over it and fantasized again about beating Chris to death. He was so goddamn sick of watching Chris screw up every chance he had to change his life, just to further cement whatever weird idea Chris had of himself as a maladjusted misfit. This was just the quintessential example of Chris being Chris -- a sale, a bona fide sure thing, walking in off the street with more money than sense, and Chris couldn't close it. Wouldn't close it. Chris was thirty-five years old, and he didn't seem to get any smarter as he got older, just more set in his ways, more wedded to his single life and his weird habits and his failing business. If Lance had any sense he'd just write the man off, but clearly when it came to Chris he didn't have much.

When this place closed, it was going to break Chris's heart. Just thinking about that came pretty damn close to breaking Lance's.

He tried to ignore it when the back door opened and closed again, because it -- just -- it wasn't a good idea for him to get in the way of Chris's employees, or for them to get in his way, of course, except he was almost done and that didn't matter so much, but still, routine and Lance didn't want to interrupt -- anyone. Anything. Work.

"Oh," Nick said quietly. He tended to speak quietly in the office, as if it were a library and Lance was doing his homework. "Hey, I. Didn't know you were here."

"I'm just leaving. There's, uh. I brought some coffee. It's out front."

"I got you something." Nick wiped his palms on his jeans a couple of times, and then picked up a stapler and moved it across the desk, setting it directly in front of Lance. "It's. I was at OfficeMax. For printer ink, for my brother? And I saw, I mean, it's no big deal. It was on sale, though, is the thing. Electric."

"Oh," Lance said. "Y'all have a stapler already, though."

"No, I know, but. It's electric, so I thought it would be good. Better. See, look." Nick slid the two pieces of paper nearest to him into the mouth of the stapler, and it spat out a staple automatically. Nick held up the pages.

Lance took them out of his hand and began to pick the staple out. "That's great, Nick. Y'all have no money, you'll default on your loan in February, and Chris won't sell a damn motorcycle, but you bought a second stapler, so that's fucking terrific."

"I. Chris didn't buy it, I did. I just thought it was better than the old one. Nobody owes me for it or anything."

"Listen, I don't mean to be-- " Lance began, standing up. They were both cornered in by the desk, and the office was none too roomy to start with. He tried to move away, but only managed to hit his knee on the chair. "Fuck," he spat. "This place is a fucking-- "

Nick put a solicitous hand on his back, and Lance didn't have any time to stop himself before his hands went up to Nick's broad shoulders. Nick's arm around his waist pulled him closer. He smelled like motor oil. Nick always smelled like motor oil. "No, don't," Lance murmured, but when Nick kissed him anyway, he slid his hands up into Nick's soft hair and held him there.

Nick pushed him back against the wall, and Lance groaned into his mouth. They always did it like this, fast and rough -- always except for one time, but every rule had an exception. Usually it was like this, with Lance's fingers scratching futilely against Nick's t-shirt, Nick's deft mechanic's hands undoing his belt without needing to look at it and working inside his loosened pants. Lance jerked his hips up, pushing his cock against Nick's dry palm. Nick's teeth scraped his tongue painfully, his fingers were too cold from being in the chilly garage behind the office, and his knee was pressed hard into Lance's thigh, but it didn't matter. Nick wasn't somebody that he went to for long, sensual lays, for exploring each other's bodies, for teasing and tasting each other. With Nick it was awkward and hungry and no time wasted getting comfortable when what they really wanted was to get off.

"Fuck," Lance said, muffling it against Nick's shoulder, because the last thing he needed was for Chris to walk in. He would pretend it didn't matter, but secretly he'd be pissed off with Lance for ages because he hadn't been told, and he wouldn't believe it when Lance promised him there was nothing to tell. There wasn't, though. There was nothing between Lance and Nick Carter, except...this, occasionally. Lance didn't even know why he kept going along with it, because it wasn't like he was so hard up for sex, but there was something about the rough, needy way that Nick thrust against Lance's hip, something about the way his dumb, friendly puppy-dog smile disappeared and he glared down into Lance's eyes when Lance tipped his head back against the wall. Lance licked his lips and let his eyes fall mostly closed, mouthing, "Yeah, yeah, come on," with barely any voice behind it.

With Nick pulling hard and relentless on his cock, his chest pressing Lance tightly against the wall, Lance had to keep rising up until he was standing almost on his toes. His knees trembled when Nick put a particularly vicious twist into the rhythm of his hand at the same time that he pressed three hard kisses down the side of Lance's face, the smell of Juicyfruit gum and oil and yesterday's bitter leftover coffee right there against Lance's skin, and Lance twisted his arms around Nick's neck and panted his way through a dizzy, disorienting orgasm. He stayed there afterwards, afraid to try supporting his own weight, just shifting around enough to give Nick his inner thigh to grind against, his big hands fitted tightly to Lance's ass, until he went abruptly still and motionless, then slumped down with his forehead on Lance's shoulder, utterly relaxed. Lance waited just a moment, then pushed him gently away and reached for the box of Kleenex on the desk so he could clean himself up just enough to tuck his cock back into his pants.

Nick stepped back and braced his hands and his ass on the edge of Lance's desk, letting it support his weight as he watched Lance with a goofy little smile. "Quit that," Lance warned, balling up the Kleenex and tossing it into the trash. He gestured toward the faint dark stain on the crotch of Nick's jeans and said, "You're all sticky."

"I have other clothes in the garage."

"We can't keep doing this," Lance said, and then realized how much it sounded like exactly what you say when you're absolutely going to keep doing this, so he changed it to, "We're not going to do this anymore. It's really just -- it's messy and stupid, and it's unprofessional. This is a business, it's not the back room of some, some leather bar." Nick always wore a wrist full of leather, buckled and snapped and tangled up with chains. Sometimes Lance thought that he wouldn't even be attracted to Nick at all without those bracelets. Sometimes.

"Okay," Nick said, still smiling. "Let's not do this anymore."

"Right," Lance said, feeling much less sure than he tried to sound. Nick said that, but he didn't really mean it. That was the difference between them: Lance always *meant* it. Or at least, he meant to mean it.

"Go out with me."

This again. "Nick, no."

"Yes. Let me take you to dinner-- "

"Where, at the Sizzler?" Lance snapped, and he felt one slight twinge at the way Nick's smile dimmed and went out for a second. But still, this was the point. This was what Nick had to get through his head. They had nothing in common, nothing to build a dating relationship on, let alone anything more.

Nick smiled again, a little softer and warmer this time. It made Lance's stomach drop, short and sharp, because good Lord, Nick might not be much of a catch in most ways, but he had that smile, and those blue eyes and those blonde lashes, and this was the reason that they could and did keep doing this. "Wherever you want. I'm good for Red Lobster, even."

"Nick...."

He reached for Lance, who didn't pull himself together to move quickly enough. Nick's hands were warm and firm on his waist, pulling him closer, and Lance braced one knee on the desk, tucked against the outside of Nick's firm thigh, slid his hands up Nick's neck and brushed his lips over Nick's upper lip, opening his mouth when Nick did.

"One date," Nick pled with him when Lance pulled back. "Dinner, this Friday, and if you don't have fun-- "

"I can't," Lance said gently. "I already have a date this Friday."

"Oh," Nick said, and leaned away slightly, just enough to cue Lane to step back. "Oh, well. That's cool. With who?"

"Just this guy. This guy Joey knows from the museum."

"Oh. So, is he an artist?"

"No, I think he does PR or something. Something with money. But there's an opening, and we're going to that and then a late supper with JC and Joey and some of the other museum people. Mostly a wine and dessert kind of thing, at Petruccio's." Nick looked down at the floor, and Lance put his hands into his pockets, digging his fingernails into his palms to keep from reaching out and petting him reassuringly. But this was the point, this was exactly what Nick needed to hear. Lance already had a life that he liked, where he could get tables at nice restaurants and make conversation with people who knew things about art and politics and where his friends set him up with men who were going somewhere. Chris was -- Chris, and they had a history together and Lance loved him, but there was a reason that Chris mostly had his own circle of friends, including Nick, and Lance had his.

"Cool," Nick said. There was an awkward pause while Lance tried to figure out how to say that Nick was sitting on the invoices he needed to file, until Nick said, "Oh, hey. You'll never believe who was here this morning."

"Oh, yeah. I know. Justin Timberlake."

"Chris told you?"

"No, I, actually I saw him in the parking lot when I came in. I gave him my phone number-- "

"He might be a little out of your league," Nick said, his voice as close to sharp as Lance had ever heard it.

"Not like that. I told him I'd talk to Chris. You guys really need to sell him that bike. You need the money, and maybe if we play our cards right we can get some buzz out of it. This could be really good for Chris, if we can get him past this pointless bike-snob bullshit he has going. I don't suppose you said that to Chris, did you?"

Nick shrugged. "I just got his autograph for Angel. I leave the money stuff to Chris."

"That's your first mistake." Lance sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Sorry, don't mean to be an ass about all this. I'm just worried about Chris. I don't know why he can't admit how great an opportunity this is for the shop."

"Maybe he was just thrown for a loop. Justin comes on pretty strong."

"What does that mean, comes on strong?"

"You know. Flirty and everything."

Lance raised his eyebrows, amused in spite of the fact that the situation wasn't really funny at all. "Justin Timberlake came in here and flirted with Chris? Our Chris?" He hadn't even heard that Timberlake swung that way. Before he was the breakout star of the year, he'd been one of Britney Spears's backup dancers, and apparently her jilted boyfriend, too, or at least that's how the story went. Built-in drama went a long way in terms of free publicity, though, so Lance could see how being the guy who picked the world's most famous cherry got you farther than just being another glorified gay chorus boy.

Nick shrugged. "Looked like it to me. I don't know, Chris didn't bite, so maybe it was all in my head or something. Maybe he's just a friendly person. That, or Chris is pretty stupid."

"Either one is possible," Lance said morosely.

*

Chris lived in a studio apartment that was barely an apartment. The ad said "loft," but really it was an attic, and they jacked the price up for charm. Chris figured he was paying a hundred bucks a pop for each of the little windows in his low, slanted ceiling that made him feel like he was living in a fucking submarine.

"We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine," he sang to himself as he took a pair of pliers to the thermostat -- the lever that you used to adjust the temperature was broken. Chris had always thought he had a pretty good voice, even if it was kind of weird and high. Of course, Justin Timberlake had kind of a weird, high voice too, all those freaky falsetto notes in that big hit of his, so hell. Maybe if Chris were tall and ripped and square-jawed, he could have been America's It Boy, too.

But whatever. He'd already wasted too much time today thinking about his brush with the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Chris put on some Rancid and fed his fish, checked the fridge and ordered a pizza, poured himself a scotch. Just another day.

Except that maybe he had a new thing to obsess over. He was pretty sure it wasn't going to be any more fun than the old thing, though.

"Ain't nothing but biology, right?" he told the fish, who waggled their tails knowingly. Chris wondered what got a fish hot. Shiny fins? Nice, plump sides? Actually, he thought maybe fish didn't get it on, per se. They laid eggs, then some other fish came along later and tossed off on them, or something like that. Which sounded an awful lot like Chris's sex life. He'd be the mack daddy of the goldfish world.

Chris sat down on his futon, trying to remember the last time he'd had anyone else up here -- other than the pizza guy, and not in a cool porno way. Just because he hated grocery shopping. He thought it was Joel, and that wasn't anything to brag about, being so fucking stupid that you fell for it *again.* It was only the selfish guys who knew how to flash those sensitive-boy eyes. Chris didn't know why he kept believing it. He wasn't even sure why he kept wanting to believe it. Like a real sensitive boy would last a week with Chris's big mouth and his intimacy problems. Christ, he wasn't even emotionally available enough for Howie, and Howie would go out with a serial killer if he brought flowers.

Chris wasn't much for flowers. He did have a thing by his futon, a metal vase filled with sharp, iron lilies, all cutting edges and rivets and scorch marks from a blowtorch. Chris was doing better welding in tenth-grade shop class, but it was art. Lance gave it to him, so he knew it was, like, actual *art.* It might have been some kind of statement, too, although Chris didn't usually give Lance credit for that kind of subtlety.

His whole fucking apartment, Chris thought in a sudden flare of directionless anger, looked like Lance -- all that black metal and trendy minimalism that Lance kept foisting off on him, because the idea of an apartment as just the place you crash at night was totally foreign to Lance. There was nowhere for Chris to look that didn't make him -- and usually that was okay but -- you know, sometimes even he got sick of wallowing in his own dysfunction.

The heat was finally kicking in, and much as Chris hated to, it was time to take off his jacket. He'd managed to avoid that all day, but he couldn't spend the rest of his life without looking at his own arm.

As aware as Chris had been of the numbers all day, something kicked hard inside of him when he pulled the jacket off and finally saw them, not at all faded from rubbing against the lining of his sleeve all day. He could almost feel the heat of Justin's palm laying across his, holding his hand down to the desk more by suggestion than strength. The slow, blunt dig of the pen against the soft inside of his forearm. The way Chris's whole universe had narrowed to the shape of Justin's mouth as he murmured, *my private number* and *in case you change your mind.* He'd been so sure, from the way he angled his head, from the intensity of his eyes on Chris, that Justin was about to kiss him, and he'd stood there like a fucking idiot, too terrified to shove him away and too turned on to grab him and be the one who threw the first kiss.

Chris poured the glass of scotch over his arm, clenching his fist as if the alcohol were cleaning out a wound instead of just washing over ink and making it blur and run, slowly becoming illegible and dripping off his skin.

In his whole life, Chris had never wanted anything that he could actually have.

*

Joey's whole apartment was lit by nothing but Christmas lights, running strings around the picture window and clusters knotted above the breakfast bar, dangling from the track-light fixtures that normally lit the paintings on the walls, crawling up the legs of the tables and the piano, all of them blinking in clusters of color. "And me without my gay apparel," Lance said. It seemed like just that morning it had been May. Right; that morning it *had* been May.

"Scary, isn't it?" Joey kissed his cheek as he took Lance's coat, and he was grinning foolishly even before he pulled his lips away. "There's nothing I can do. He bought it all at Big Lots; he loves it." For the first time in Joey's life, there was only one *he.*

Chris flipped the lights off on Nick, but for all he knew, the kid didn't even notice. Nick worked better with his hands than his eyes anyway; he owned a pair of glasses he wouldn't wear, and somehow he was still the best mechanic Chris had ever had, like he had eyes in his fingertips, like he knew everything there was to know about a bike just by cracking it open and putting his hands inside it. "Five o'clock," Chris said, even though it was practically nine. "Quitting time."

"I'm cool," Nick said.

"I don't pay you overtime."

"I know. I'm just, I'm cool, I'm doing my thing."

He thought about leaving; Nick could lock up on his own, and Chris didn't like to interfere with other people's lives too much. People were better off fucking up in their own special way, the way Chris figured it. But Nick was a good kid, and as employees went, he was definitely above and beyond. It could only be to Chris's advantage to look out for him, at least until he figured out he could be making a lot more money somewhere else. "Come on," he said. "I'm buying."

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"Let me see you," Lance ordered, taking Joey by the shoulders and angling him one way and then the other. "It's not rented, is it?"

"No! It's vintage. I had it tailored."

"Did you take where I told you to?"

"I do everything you tell me to, don't I?"

The tux had a little bit of satin on the lapels, but Lance could let that go. He smoothed the jacket and brushed his hands down Joey's shirt, then gave Joey a sly look up through his eyelashes as his hands settled on Joey's cummerbund. "Looking more like your dad every day, aren't you?"

"Yeah, well," Joey chuckled, pushing his hands away. "After twenty years of carrot sticks and Stairmasters just to be able to get into the good clubs, it's nice not to have to give a damn how I look in leather pants."

"You have not been clubbing since you were nine years old."

"Feels like it. I've been looking for a good man since I was nine years old, anyway."

"Didn't you ever find one?" Joey had sure as hell perfected the art of the search, at any rate.

"Oh, a couple." He kissed Lance's forehead softly and said, "I'm not gonna blow it with this one, I promise."

"I'm not dressed for it." Nick wiped his hands on his shirt and then grimaced down at them, lined with apparently permanent stains. He tried to push the hair back off his forehead with a clean patch on his forearm.

Chris started out the door, but when he turned back to pull it closed behind him, he couldn't help but see Nick with his arms wrapped around his knees. He'd probably sit in the dark all damn night if Chris left him there.

"We'll go to Styx," Chris suggested. "It's pretty kinky; maybe they'll think you're trolling for someone with a power tools fetish."

"You just like going there because you sleep with the bartender."

"What? No." Chris hadn't slept with a woman in... God, three or four years, at least. He seemed to have decided to give them up, although he didn't really remember making that decision. "She's just a friend. I mean, I slept with her one time, when we first met. Did you ever...." Chris had no idea why he was doing this, why he was standing here in the dark talking to Nick about his sex life, but shit, the kid was just so...pathetic. Chris had this stupid way of wanting to entertain anyone who looked like they were having a worse Friday night than he was. "Did you ever see a girl after she rides a Harley for the first time? They're either totally freaked out and terrified, or else they're.... They sort of glow. They're all sweaty and, and glowing, and if you put your hands right on this certain spot over their hips, you can still kind of feel the engine. Like aftershocks. Like it got inside them somehow. I don't know. It's hot."

"I had a girlfriend once," Nick said. "She was, uh. She didn't really have a job, and she changed her name like three times while we were together. I don't know, it was weird. I don't really know why we ever.... Her hair smelled good, though. She had this long hair that smelled really good, and she played guitar. She'd sit on the floor in front of the stereo and play along with my old Chicago albums. She was.... I don't know. I liked her, I guess. No, I mean. I did."

"So we should go out and, like, pick up chicks or something," Chris said, and it must have worked, because he got a laugh out of Nick.

"Right," Nick said. "That's what we should do."

Joey knocked on the bedroom door and spoke directly into it, saying, "Baby. Are you almost done yet or what? We have to go." Whatever response he got must have been good enough, although Lance couldn't hear a thing. Joey shook his head helplessly and walked back toward the kitchen, grabbing a bottle of wine from a brass wine-rack that had Christmas lights climbing it like electric blue ivy. "We're gonna be late; we might as well have a drink."

Lance bellied up to Joey's breakfast bar, reaching over his head for one of the wine glasses that hung upside down above it. "Am I going to want to be drunk for this date?"

Joey paused in mid-corkscrew long enough to look up at Lance with shocked and wounded eyes. "Lance, Lance, Lance. This is me you're talking to. Would I set you up with seconds and irregulars?"

"I don't know," Lance said. "Used to be, if the guy was worth anything you'd snap him up for yourself first, and now I'm your pathetic single friend, and you'd probably fix me up with whatever had a pulse and a dick so we can all double-date and be adorable together."

They always went to Styx when Chris was buying, because he didn't have to buy at all; he'd sold his very first Harley to the bartender there, for eight hundred dollars and free drinks until the end of time. She never would have been able to afford it if he'd charged her what it was worth, and he knew how bad she needed it, because he saw her before her first ride on one and he saw her after, and Chris knew how it felt, to be free for the first time in a long time. He fucked her that night, too, but not because it was part of the sale or anything, just because she was all sweaty and glowing when she swung off the seat, the sexiest thing Chris thought he'd ever seen.

She still was, and if Chris were just a little bit more into chicks he might be all kinds of fucked up over her, but as it stood, he was just enough into them to make the view a nice one, the metal in her tongue flashing in the neon light from in between her slick black-inked lips, her vinyl top buckled so tight around her that Chris could see the shape of her nipple rings outlined underneath. "Four Heinekens," he said as he bellied up to the bar. "And what are you wearing under that skirt?"

"I'll give you three and a water," Xtina said. "And wouldn't you like to know."

"Now, you know Howie's not underage; he's just immature."

"He's also here with AJ, and the last time I saw AJ in here, he stopped by to make amends, so. Mooch for your other friends."

Chris glanced back at their table, eyes narrowed. He gave Howie a lot of shit, but they went way back, and Chris tried to look out for the guy. He had no survival skills when it came to men, just throwing his heart away on any loser who was nice to him for two seconds. He'd already abandoned his chair and moved into AJ's lap, his arms laced around AJ's neck, smiling giddily at him. "Every time you think he can't get stupider," Chris said, shaking his head. "Howie's whole social life involves drinking, so of course it makes perfect sense to date an alcoholic. Sometimes I wonder how he musters up the brainpower to keep on breathing."

"Real nice," Xtina said. "I thought you were his best friend?"

"I am," Chris said, and gave her a shark-like grin. "What does *that* tell you?"

"You should take Nick home." The music was so loud out on the floor that Howie couldn't really whisper into Chris's ear; he had to put his mouth there and then speak in a normal voice. "You should take him home and *keep* him. Then we could do this all the time, the four of us."

"Nick works for me."

"You don't know what you're missing," Howie sang into his ear.

"Not really my type," Chris said, trying to shrug with Howie's hands on his shoulders. "Nice kid, great mechanic, but that's it. Anyway, he's got this huge, pathetic crush on Lance Bass."

"Mmm," Howie murmured, and when the music cut off he slipped out of Chris's arms. "Imagine that."

"You're not drunk already, are you? Because you're being weird."

"No, I'm not drunk." But that wouldn't be too hard to fix. Lance downed half his glass of Chardonnay in one swallow. "It's just been a hard week."

Joey made sympathetic clucking noises and refilled his glass. "Well, you'll like him, I promise. And he's strictly a publicist, knows fuck-all about art, so he'll need lots of care and guidance at the show."

"Even I can impress him, huh?"

"Would you stop? This is so not like you, kiddo. I meant, you know a ton about art, and even if you don't hit it off right away, you can talk him through the show and that'll give you a good way to break the ice and come off all sophisticated and sexy. Which you are, and you know it, too."

"Indeed I am," Lance said. "You make a convincing argument."

"Indeed I do. And for your information, Mr. Suspicious, if I were single I would *totally* snap him up for myself. Wanna tell me about your hard week?"

"Not really. It's just -- some boring work stuff, and some stuff with Chris. It's not even really... It's not a big deal. Thank God it's Friday, that's all. Also," he added lightly, "Justin never did call me back. So our torrid affair has been nipped in the bud." Joey purred sympathetically and clinked his glass against Lance's.

"Who didn't call you back?" Lance tried not to jump at the unexpected voice; one of the annoying things about JC was that he went everywhere on silent little cat feet, and he couldn't help but sneak up on you even when he wasn't trying. That, and also how Joey worshiped and adored him and would never, ever dream of cheating on him and had never once in all the years Lance had known him been half as happy as he was with JC. That was a tiny bit annoying, too. "Justin Taylor?"

"Justin Timberlake," Joey corrected. "Baby, you can't wear that. It's black-tie."

"No!" Howie said shrilly, and AJ absently wiped the foam off Howie's upper lip. "The real Justin Timberlake?"

"No," Chris said dryly. "His stunt double."

"I've heard sometimes they do that," Nick said. "Like, Eminem, he has a body double. I guess he needs one for a decoy or something, so he can get away from the paparazzi."

"Saddam Hussein had one of those, too," AJ added, smirking.

"It wasn't a fucking body double," Chris said impatiently. "And it was no big deal. He came in, he looked around, I didn't have what he was looking for. Call the fucking nightly news -- pop star goes shopping."

Howie leaned forward, his elbow jostling his fourth, mostly full glass of beer and sloshing it onto the table. AJ leaned forward with him, just enough to sniff at Howie's hair, which he was wearing long and blown-out these days, in spite of Chris's persistent mockery. "What was he like?" he asked breathlessly.

Chris leaned back in his chair, nursing his own third beer against his chest. "About like you'd think."

"Cute," Nick said easily. "Kind of regular, you know, but cute. I don't know, he looked more regular than he looks in pictures."

"Nick has the poster," Chris said nastily.

"I'd fuck him," AJ said.

"Nice," Chris snapped. "Real nice, with your boyfriend sitting right here. Guess the honeymoon's over, huh?"

"It's okay," Howie said lazily. "I'd fuck him, too."

JC looked down at his black flocked pants and the sea-green silk shirt that clung to his skin except for where the top three and bottom three undone buttons allowed it to fold softly away. "But this is really nice. It's designer. Joey, I bought it just for this show, I can't take it back."

Joey looked helplessly at Lance, who held up his hands. "And you look great," Joey said, "but they just won't let...."

JC smiled and hopped up on the barstool next to Lance's. The Christmas lights flickered over his silk shirt and his pale gold skin and his smile, and he was disgustingly beautiful. He leaned across the bar and kissed Joey sweetly, and when he pulled back he said, "Sure they will. Everyone at the museum knows me; they won't mind."

"Yeah, I guess not," Joey said, dazed. "It's okay." JC put one knee up on the edge of the bar and boosted himself up to get an arm around Joey's neck and kiss him deeper, staying crouched low so that his wayward curls just brushed the glasses hanging above him and made them swing gently. Lance tried to find someplace interesting to look, but it was just Joey's apartment, and it looked maybe a little different with the new lighting scheme, but not much. He was even used to JC's piano now. JC had only been living here for two months, but it was starting to feel normal, and even inevitable, instead of like the insane mistake Lance was sure it was when Joey announced that the unemployed art-groupie that he'd been fucking for a grand total of three hundred and thirty-two *hours* was moving in with him. Lance still wasn't sure what would happen when they got out of that stage where they were having sex all the time, even with their clothes on, even when they weren't touching, but he had to admit that Joey, who'd slept with every man in Pittsburgh, had never looked at even one of them the way he looked at JC. Maybe, after all, that counted for something. Maybe.

"Why would Justin Timberlake call you?" JC asked, startling Lance. He looked back over in time to see JC sliding with boneless grace back down to his stool. "I mean. Not in a mean way, but...."

Lance waved away his apology. "No, I just ran into him when he was in town earlier, and I was going to put him in touch with Chris. He was wanting a motorcycle. I don't think it's going to work out, though."

"No, no, I want to," Nick said, and dropped his wallet when he tried to open it. It was a good thing Chris *wasn't* running a tab for the evening, because it wasn't even ten o'clock yet, and Nick was trying to break him. "I'll just -- kick in -- "

Chris bent down to retrieve the wallet; if Nick bent down, he'd probably hit the floor. "Fucking shut up about it, Carter. I've got it."

"I have -- I'm not *broke,*" he said, and something flared in his eyes, even hotter than the flush in his cheeks. "I can pay my own way sometimes. I'm not rich, but I'm not...broke."

"Yeah, I know," Chris said quietly. The wallet at the end of Nick's chain was full of photos, cramped group shots of kids that all looked vaguely like Nick.

"I have a lot of expenses," Nick said. "I have people to take care of. But I do okay. I could...buy things. I could go places, not Petruccio's, but *places.*"

Fleetingly, Chris covered Nick's hand with his own. "Kid, you're a keeper," he said gruffly. "Don't let anybody say you're not. Even him."

"I love him," Nick blurted, and raised big, sad eyes to Chris, like he was waiting for Chris to tell him why that wasn't as bad as it sounded like it was. "I mean, I know he's a fucking snob."

"He's not," Chris sighed. "He just wants to be."

"But I love him anyway. And he has feelings for me, too, if he'd just -- if he'd just fucking *admit* -- if he'd even give it a chance. If he'd just give me a *chance.*"

"You and me should hook up," Chris said, and he meant it kind of sarcastically, like it was his own stupid way of saying, I know exactly how you feel. But Nick looked up at him, soft, blurry eyes and floppy hair and everything laid bare and childishly unsubtle on his face, and Chris felt his fingers tighten so hard around his beer glass he thought it might break.

"Okay," Nick said, and Chris thought, *Shit.*

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

JC frowned a little, the way he always did when Chris' name came up. Lance hadn't managed to pry the whole story out of either of them yet, but when he'd told Chris that Joey had fallen for some guy he'd met on a museum tour who looked like Orlando Bloom and thought modern art was the most exciting career a person could have, better than being a heart surgeon or the President of the United States, Chris had rolled his eyes and said, "Oh, well, that would be JC Chasez, then." And when Lance first mentioned Chris' name around JC, JC started to fiddle with his hands behind his back, and said, "Tell him I said hi," while looking at the carpet. Lance didn't pass that on. Pittsburgh was, in all too many ways, too small a town for Lance's tastes.

To break the tension, Joey said, "Lance is having some blind-date nerves. Tell him everything's gonna be good, will you?"

"Oh, yeah, we're going to have fun!" JC said brightly, reaching out to squeeze Lance's forearm. "Wade is fabulous! And he's totally your type."

"And what is my type?"

"You know," JC said, making a complicated gesture with his hand. "He's -- tall."

"He's *tall,*" Lance repeated. And people called *him* the shallow one.

But JC nodded seriously, as if he'd just said something terribly instructive. "He's very tall, and he's kind of -- intense. You know, driven. Like, he can overwhelm you, just because he knows himself so well, he knows exactly what he likes. That's what made it not work with you and Joey, you dig? Because you loved each other so much, but Joey hasn't ever known what he wants." It was a cruel and ridiculous thing to say, but JC leaned back with a wide, sweet smile, his cheek next to Joey's cheek, and they made it look romantic somehow, the way Joey's big hands came up to circle JC's arms, the way Joey rolled his eyes and how their smiles touched each other at the corners.

"I know I want *you,*" Joey growled playfully, and shook JC like a dog worrying at his favorite toy until JC was squirming and laughing. "Who loves you, honey-bunny, huh?"

"You do," JC breathed out, and his smile seemed improbably to grow even wider.

Lance looked away, staring at the door as if he could make his date knock on it *right now.*

He didn't know what it made him feel, kissing Nick. It made him feel -- drunk. Short. Confused. A little bit turned on, yeah, because Nick had these huge hands that were constantly tugging on him, wrapping into his hair or pressing on his thighs and the small of his back like he couldn't pull Chris close enough to him, and that was...nice. Just the feel of someone else's body against his, someone else's warmth, was so unusual lately that it was a relief.

*Sex,* some part of his brain was repeating urgently. He could get *laid* tonight, and wasn't that worth whatever awkwardness he was feeling now, whatever embarrassment they might have to deal with tomorrow morning? Chris hooked his fingers in Nick's wide belt and slid his other hand up Nick's sweat-damp side and tried not to think anything except *sex, sex, sex, sex.*

"Come on, come on," Nick mumbled into his mouth as he tugged on Chris's clothes. "Let's go."

Chris pulled back enough to breathe, and to ignore Howie waving excitedly out of the corner of his eye. "Come on," he repeated, keeping his fingers anchored around Nick's belt. "If we're gonna do this, let's do this. Fuck it."

Styx didn't have a back room, but Chris had never let that stop him in the past. Nobody stopped them as they ducked around the bar and opened the door to the wine cellar. The single bulb over the stairs was already lit, and with Nick standing a step below him, Chris at least didn't feel quite as short anymore, although drunk, confused, and turned-on were all elbowing each other, jockeying for that extra space in his head. He put his hands on Nick's face, and Nick groaned as he opened his mouth wider under Chris's, his big hands spreading across Chris's ribs.

"No," Chris heard as he worked Nick's belt open, and dimly it occurred to him that Nick sounded pretty girly.

"Shit," Nick whispered, in an entirely different voice, and Chris pried his eyes open. All he could see was the smooth skin of Nick's cheek, so he closed his eyes again and pressed Nick against the wall, biting softly at his jaw even as his brain was processing. Oh, okay -- not Nick's voice. Someone else.... "We have to," Nick whispered into his ear again. "Stop..."

"Shut up," Chris whispered back. The button on Nick's jeans didn't seem to fit through the buttonhole, so Chris just lowered the zipper instead and pressed the heel of his hand against the thin fabric of the underwear covering Nick's cock. This was the worst idea Chris had ever fucking had, and it was too late to take it back now, so what the hell. What did it matter anyway? The way things were going at the shop, Nick wouldn't even be his employee for much longer.

"I won't," another voice said -- definitely a female voice, sharp and bitchy, strained. "I won't, you don't mean it."

"I do mean it." Xtina's voice -- Chris recognized it now, although he'd never heard her sound so rattled. So frightened. "Go away, get out of here. You can't be here-- " Her voice cut off suddenly, and Chris had to turn his head to confirm his suspicions. Nick didn't object, maybe because he wasn't slackening the pressure of his hand against Nick's hard-on.

Chris didn't think he knew the chick. She wasn't tall, but taller than Xtina, and he couldn't see either of their faces through the curtain of her long hair, ironed flat to within an inch of its life. He glanced back at Nick, who was watching the women in the wine cellar too, and he flashed a bemused smile at Chris. Chris shrugged; there wasn't usually a crowd down here. How could he have known?

"You can't tell me where to be," she said when she pulled away from their kiss, pushing her hair back roughly. She looked like she belonged at Miss Fit's or one of the other dykier bars on South Liberty, with her combat boots and her camouflage pants and her buffed arms bared by a blue and black tiger-striped tank top, and there was a backpack by her feet -- not at all the kind of girl you usually found in Styx, the kind who paid quite a lot to look as cheap as they did in vinyl and tiny strips of miniskirt. "You can't tell me what to do, and don't give me that for my own good crap, you're not my fucking mom. You wanted me to come, don't act like you didn't want to see me again."

"God, shut up," Xtina said, and her voice cracked badly, nothing like the cool bitch on a bike that Chris knew. Nick began to fidget restlessly against the wall, and Chris made another attempt at the button on his jeans without being able to tear his eyes away from the scene going on below him. They were kissing again, silent and frozen in place but leaning into each other at the lips as if it would kill them to separate. But they did, and Xtina put her hands over her eyes and said, "You're just a stupid little girl, okay? You don't know what I want. You don't know anything. We could lose our fucking liquor license just for you being in here right now, did you know *that*?"

The girl grabbed Xtina by the arms and spun her around, so that she had to put her hands up and grab one of the wine shelves for balance. Two bottles slipped off the edge and shattered on the floor, drowning out the sound of Nick's startled gasp. "I do know," she said, alternating her words with rough, open-mouthed kisses against her spine, the smooth skin on her back, the dusting of freckles over her shoulders. "I know, we both want, and you know I'm not, not a little girl, how good it was, I wanted to see you, I didn't care."

"That's the problem, Avril," she said, almost managing a stern tone even as the girl ran her hands up the front of Xtina's thighs and underneath her skirt. "I do care. I'm not seventeen, I don't get the luxury of not giving a shit about the future."

Chris let his kiss trail off, so they were standing quietly, pressed against each other with Nick's lower lip between his teeth and the words thundering through Chris's whole body. The luxury of not giving a shit, which was exactly what he was looking for right now, but how stupid, how fucking stupid. He was thirty-three years old, old enough to know what *morning after* meant, old enough to know that adding new regrets didn't erase the previous ones, old enough for more than this.

"I can't leave," the girl said, and it sounded like she might be crying, unless it was just the way her voice was muffled against Xtina's shoulder. "I can't, I'm out of my mind whenever I go away from you. I know I don't mean shit to you and it doesn't even matter, you're still all I think about."

Chris watched them for a minute, the way they rolled their hips in the same rhythm, the way they raked their palms over each other's clothes. It was graceful and raw and sexy, and most of all it was something to look at besides the desolate expression on Nick's face. He didn't deserve to have Chris prying into his emotions even accidentally, the poor bastard.

Another wine bottle smashed on the floor while Nick was fastening up his pants, and he glanced up at Chris with a weak smile. Chris reached up and cuffed him on the side of the face to show no hard feelings.

so maybe i should try watching the show, huh?

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 18:26:02 GMT

You scored as Moya (from Farscape). You are surrounded by muppets. But that is okay because they are your friends and have shown many times that they can be trusted. Now if only you could stop being bothered about wormholes.

Coming on December 1, 2005:

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? The Sequel

</td>

Moya (from Farscape)

88%

Serenity (from Firefly)

75%

SG-1 (from Stargate)

75%

Millennium Falcon (from Star Wars)

69%

Galactica (from Battlestar: Galactica)

63%

Nebuchadnezzar (from The Matrix)

56%

Bebop (from Cowboy Bebop)

50%

Enterprise D (from Star Trek)

44%

Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? v1.0
created with QuizFarm.com

time's fun when you're having rum

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 19:08:41 GMT

So it's back to school, and I feel like I'm cheating this semester, because I'm taking a creative writing workshop (that's not *school!* all they want me to do is *write!*) and two 20th century poetry classes, one on modern Irish poetry that is almost entirely Yeats and Heaney, and one on modern British poetry that is...Yeats, Heaney, and some other people. I even have to buy the same *books* for both classes, and I'm already plotting ways to write the same term paper for both. *g*

Me and Yeats are gonna be likethis for a few weeks, here.

I have cannily noticed there are no female poets on either syllabus, and since my fourth class is Shakespeare, that means that for the first time possibly in my entire college career, *I* am the only woman writer I need to know anything about this semester. *g* I was quite startled that the British poetry class didn't have any women, but then as I ticked off Significant Modern Female Poets in my head, I couldn't think of any that weren't American, either. Of course, you've already got your Audens and your Eliots confusing the American/British issue, so you could bring in Gertrude Stein or H.D. on the same passport, I guess. But anyway.

Speaking of lesbian writers, hey, The L Word is back on! I'm way hyped about this season; 2nd was a huge leap better than 1st, and if "Labia Majora" is any indication, it's just going to keep making me happier and happier.

Bette and Tina crack me up. They're constantly entertaining: two women with NOTHING in common, who practically can't bear to live together and yet are even more miserable apart -- it could be horribly twisted, but instead the show writes them as just twisted enough to be fun to watch. Also, goddamn but Laurel is looking good this season. Yeow. I mean, she's always been lovely, but sometimes when you're standing next to Jennifer Beals, you get a little overlooked. New Year's Resolution: don't do that anymore! Because yeow.

Okay, I wasn't too pleased about this whole Alice/Dana breakup/breakdown thing, especially because Chef Woman is so unbearably boring that it really kind of makes you wonder, Dana, wtf? But Leisha does such great comedy, I'm kind of enjoying her grand wig-out -- as long as it doesn't go on for *too* long, 'kay? Also, I have never, ever in my life considered the pairing, but all of a sudden I'm kind of an Alice/Helena shipper. Because what's not funny about that? And I *like* Helena as a character -- althought I didn't at first, because I thought they were just writing her as a wealthy piranha bitch -- but as last season went on, I got kind of intrigued by this idea that as a lover, a mom, and a friend, she's this totally socially distorted person who has *no idea* how to create and maintain relationships, much as she really wants them. I sort of love the idea of her being steamrolled over by Alice, who has no filters and no sense of social obligation whatsoever, but is very genuine in the way that Helena has no idea how to be. And when Helena falls, she *lavishes* her women with attention and adoration, which Alice very clearly needs desperately. They'd be a very odd couple, but this is tv; we don't want them to be *too* compatible, or there's nothing to watch. So, plan of attack for Alice: 1) get your meds straightened out, stat, and b) let Helena spoil you to death. Alice would also be a totally awesome Batty Stepmother (though hopefully they get a solid, no-nonsense nanny to balance out the freak factor in that household a bit).

You know, I'm probably not supposed to say this, but I've done a bit of a slow reversal on Jenny; I really think I like her. I started liking her when she moved in with Shane last season, because Jenny and Shane have such great chemistry, and they had some of the best scenes of the whole show: both of them with perpetually off-center perceptions of the world, Shane with that fabulously expressive face and laconic speaking style (OMG, I just now considered the parallels to Ronon, how fucking weird is that and do I have a type or *what*? It's just not a *physical* type per se), Jenny with that odd mix of utter, incisive pragmatism and that other foot set entirely in her whole crazy inner universe. The only thing I clearly remember of last season's finale was Shane rescuing Jenny, and how they kind of made me cry a little bit. I know, I know, Jenny's utterly batshit insane, but throughout 2nd season, we started to get these looks at what she was like underneath, what happy,stable!Jenny would be like, and she had a sense of humor and a wry outlook and this lovely inner strength that only reinforced my sense that half of what was wrong with Jenny was just the normal stuff that's wrong with those annoying hipster college girls who think they have themselves figured out but are just too young to really have done it. I like that they seem to be letting Jenny get her issues under control and mature -- I'm rooting for her! I particularly loved her scenes with her mom -- the way they started out as a kind of blah, blah, blah homophobic parents tv thing, and then they have that nice scene on the porch where Jenny clearly loves and respects her mother and is pretty admirably good at accepting her mom's problems as just a part of who they are to each other. That was very well done, I think. And we didn't get to see a lot of Moira, but I'm digging her so far. The show doesn't really need another couple, so I'm hoping Moira comes home with her and then we get to see them as single-in-the-city friends having wacky adventures, rather than as a grand romance.

I can't even -- dude, I have *nothing* to say about Carmen and Shane, except OMG, SHOW, DON'T BREAK MY HEART, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE! I love them both *so* much, and I've been all about the pairing since Carmen's first *ten seconds* on the screen. I'd tell you what I loved about Carmen and Shane, but I'd just be recapping *every single second* of their scenes in this episode. EVERY SINGLE SECOND. I just -- almighty gah!

BTW, does anyone know where a girl might go to look for L-Word icons?

quick like bunny!

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 15:09:13 GMT

Can someone tell me in which Firefly episode Inara and Kaylee try to dress River up, and she hates it and gets agitated? I cannot for the LIFE of me seem to locate it, and I know I'm not making it up -- right?

*grumbles* When, o when, will holiday-gift-fic-season ever end??

2005 pop SeSa recs -- vol. 3, the Timbertrick edition

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 21:08:05 GMT

Gradually, Then Suddenly If I'd written a story this year that I actually liked, I would have hoped it would be something like this one. *g* This is a lovely, airy dive-bomb through history, lighting gently on all the various phases of Chris and Justin's relationship, hook-ups, freak-outs, teasing, romance, bitching about losing their spark, the whole life cycle of a long relationship in grand swoops, telling exactly what it needs, no more and no less. This is one of those stories where nothing really happens, and yet you feel like it's been packed dense with drama and suspense and whatnot. Gorgeous.

Reclaiming If I just said There are fifteen moments Chris regrets in his life, and eleven of them belong to Justin, would you go read it? Sure, you would! Because that's a brilliant line and you know it is. This is one of those stories that feels horribly sad and yet twists up at the last moment and makes you fantastically happy -- this pairing seems especially good for that kind of thing. There's not a note hit here that other writers haven't done many times, but the writing is just masterful, and it's always good to sit back and let someone who really knows how to write go for it -- reminds you that even if there are only, whatever, seven stories in the world, none of us are going to run out of things to read anytime soon, as long as people like this keep wanting to write for us.

Rhymes With Moon I just like this one because it's a textbook example of how to write a PWP. They pretty much just have sex on a beach, but it's so perfectly *them* that it wouldn't make sense as a story with any other couple. It's just charming and dorky and hot, a candy-kiss of a story.

2005 pop SeSa recs -- vol. 2

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 20:17:46 GMT

Gratuity It's hookerfic, only not the normal kind. One of those Sex-in-the-City-esque AUs, which I don't always like, but I don't always dislike, either -- Justin's friends buy him a night with an upscale escort, and who's more luxury-goods than Lance Bass? Some of the dialogue felt slightly off, but some of it was *fantastic,* and Justin trying hard to be a respectful john, puzzling out the etiquette of the situation, was too perfect. About halfway through I started to sense there was a twist to this story, and I thought I had it figured out, but in fact I didn't, quite, so that was fun. The other guys have small but well-done roles: Chris was *irritating* and adorable, rather than the usual fan schtick of him being adorable and secretly smooth and brilliant, and JC was daffy without being, you know, stupid (It's usually best to ignore JC when he starts reminiscing; otherwise you end up talking about the mating habits of ticks or how many slices of Kraft cheese it would take to tile the living room floor is on my ballot for best single line of this year's SeSa.)

Imaginary Boyfriend Ah, magical realism, how we've missed you! The perennial popslash theme of real vs. ideal, in a sweet little story where Chris wakes up one morning and Joey is his boyfriend, and it's just a little too good to be, well, real. Somehow, writing on this theme with Chris and Joey, the least idealized of the guys, makes it feel very fresh and interesting -- it's not about marketing and packaging and media standards and yadda yadda, but just about how you naturally tweak people in your head just a little tiny bit to make them better than they are, and what it feels like to realize you can stop doing that after all.

A Sad Variety of Woe I'm reccing this with some caveats, because I think it was written a little stiffly, and something about the style made it distancing when it should have been intimate and painful. The future-tense didn't help; you can't use two strongly distinctive tricks in one story, and the premise was already strong enough. This is an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind riff, and I loved it for looking at that issue of, what do you do when you know for sure that you've lived through something so remarkable that for the rest of your life, nothing else will really compare? I thought it was particularly interesting that Justin had done the same thing in a sense, putting this vast gap between his old and new lives, and even more interesting that his friends *assumed* his motives were the the same as Chris's, even when they weren't exactly. I particularly loved the semi-meta concept that they're saved by a fangirl who can't quite bear to let go of them; yay, fangirls! I think this story needs a rewrite with the help of a really experienced beta, and that if it got that, it would be fucking amazing. As it is, I like it anyway; it's definitely worth reading.

Hard to Say I'm Sorry: A film about *NSync From the genre of Phantom Fourth Album/Tour stories, and I can't sum it up better than Steve Fatone when he says "Justin Timberlake, former boyband member turned solo artist turned boyband member again turned amateur documentarian. Does he know what he's doing? No, but isn't he cute?" A technically brilliant story, very entertaining with some nice, hot sex at the end, and my only complaint is that I think there was so much gold in the idea that *Justin,* of all people, has decided he needs to film this himself, that the story could really only get around to mining part of it. This is a nearly perfect road-fic/romance, and I'm probably being just difficult and picky to point out that it could have been a genius psychological investigation into Justin, too. How many brilliant stories was I expecting this author to turn out in one sitting? *g* It's great; there's nothing not to like, so read it. (I'm just saying, there's a really interesting remix lurking in there somewhere, too.)

2005 pop SeSa recs, vol. 1

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 17:45:04 GMT

The Earl of Rothinghamtonfordshire This was a big, big winner for me. I expected it to be a crack-ficcy romance novel parody, a la those Harlequin stories they were doing over in Atlantis fandom last fall, but it's not! It's teenage Nick, deciding it can't be that hard to write a novel! Only he went to bus school, so, harder than you'd think. The story is just gold -- funny as hell, and able to jab the boys without seeming mean-spirited; Nick is dumb as a box of hammers and Justin is totally self-absorbed, but in *endearing* ways, not that kind of "look how superior we, the readers are" way. I particularly loved the Backstreet group meetings, because it's harder, in my experience, to find good BSB whole-group-tomfoolery than it is to find the same thing in NSync fandom, and this is *very* good. Almost every line in those scenes is entirely quotable, but this will have to stand in:
"Look, Nick," Howie said, "the point of this whole meeting was not to tell you what we didn't like about your book --"

"It wasn't?" Kevin said.

"You all thought we were having a meeting to talk about what we didn't like in Nick's book?"

"I didn't know," Brian said. "I just go where I'm told."

AJ said, "I thought there was going to be food."

And if that doesn't make you want to read the story, well, Jed, I don't even want to know you.

Perfect and Unattached struck me as very similar, and that's not a bad thing. They're both Howie/Nick stories set "currently," and although their plots have very little in common, they just have a similar sense of chronicling the ups and downs and peculiarities of daily life on tour, and as in the last rec, excellent, excellent use of BSB group dynamics. They're both nice, low-key love stories of the, "Hey, how come I didn't know I was in love with him?" variety, a genre I'm fond of, and patience is rewarded and happy endings abound, and even though I'm not keen on this pairing, I had fun reading both. They're also both quite long, which is often a negative for me, but I didn't mind so much this time, and I know lots of people love the long ones, so that's all roses. And I don't know if it was drawn from a real concert moment or not (with these guys, it's hard to say), but the image of Kevin with a thrown bra tied around his head will be with me forever (that one comes courtesy of "Perfect").

A Cable Car Named Desire is one you might really like or really not, depending on your tolerance for genre gimmicks. It's a hardboiled noir detective story set in post-War San Francisco, and the author absolutely has the sound of the genre down cold -- so if, like me, you enjoy the dames-and-gumshoes patter, it's fun to read, but it might grate on you if that's not your thing. There's some pretty solid history in it, actually, about the early years of such a creature as a gay community and its relationship to the war, and a nice use of early-Cold War stuff, although the plot gets increasingly rushed and perfunctory as it gets toward the end (don't they always, with these deadlined stories?). Actually, there were a couple of things about the end I wasn't too pleased with, but once again, if you're a noir fan, the fun of reading it should trump the pacing and other assorted problems. This story is one of those that you get in popslash where you can't help thinking that with the names changed, it'd make a nice short novel for some queer press somewhere -- particularly in this case, where the story really needed a bit more elbow room to put some suspense into the last act.

Everything In Its Place Really, the only thing wrong with this story is that when you read GSF, you expect more porn. This is as close as it gets to gen GSF, with the emphasis on the group dynamics and whatnot, and really, where's the freaking porn, guys? I've noticed overall this year is gennish, with a lot of sort of old-school kiss-in-the-last-reel endings. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Anyway, this is a sweet, funny story; it's not the first fic in the world to try a patch-job on recent history and reaffirm that, no! They still love each other -- just in, like, private -- where no one can see! But it's one of the most successful. Hell, the writer almost had me convinced, and I am vv bitter and cynical about this kind of thing. JC faking an ancient prophecy from a Chinese sage that says they have to have an orgy in order to save the world from destruction is pretty fucking priceless.

who are you, boogaloo, we've seen ten of you just this morning

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 16:47:32 GMT

Back from my extended vacation to the hometown! Actually, I got back Tuesday night, but after a fourteen-hour drive (14! Why do I do this to myself? Next time I drive home, I'm making Mary come with me for that reason alone) I was in no shape to do anything, and then yesterday I woke up and found that my mild cold had turned into a GIANT, SOUL-SUCKING COLD FROM BEYOND THE VOID. So I did what any reasonable person would do -- I stayed in bed all day, ate a tin of Christmas cookies, and tried to convince people in chat that there is *too* a vv compelling reson to be a Teal'c/Daniel shipper. (It really all boils down to: candles.)

Anyway, the trip was good! Staying out as late as my 20-year-old sister makes me feel young *g* -- particularly when I could then get up and do things before one in the afternoon, unlike my 20-year-old sister. My father's church has this nifty movie theater on the third floor, with actual movie seats and a popcorn machine and surround-sound, so kind of the geek highlight of my week was taking my shiny new copy of Serenity up to the church with my family and hylomorph and dcaspall and gwyndolin to see it on the big screen once again. shoesbaby would have been there, except for the part about being a loser with other friends to go visit -- and by the way, y'all, I'm still not convinced there's such a person as "Katrina." You just got that name out of the newspaper, didn't you?

In less cheerful news, my father and sister continue to hate each other, but I really think it's the kind of thing that will be self-correcting once they don't actually have to live together. My grandmother is, you know, barely there anymore -- she has a particularly severe form of dementia that may or may not be Alzheimer's depending on which doctor you're asking -- and I was really happy that I went there in October, because at that point she had no short-term memory, but it was still obviously her you were talking to. You just had the same conversation over and over in about eight minute intervals, because that's how long it takes her to forget what's been said. But at this point, I mean, she's just not...I mean, there's really no earth logic there at all. But given that she also has emphysema and no one expected her to live this long at all, I was treating the October visit in my mind like it was the last time I'd see her -- so in a way, I was very well-prepared to feel like I wasn't seeing her now, either, if that makes any sense. They're selling her house in March, and we're in the process of picking it over and taking the things we need or want for family reasons, and I got the only thing I've been saying all along I wanted to lay sole claim to, which is an old ceramic butter churn that sat, all my life, next to the step up from my grandparents' den into their kitchen. When I was young, my grandfather (who died right after I turned nine) used to hide candy and toys and whatnot in it, and as soon as I'd come over to visit, he'd make a big fuss over how I had to go check the churn, because I was the official churn-checker (I was the only grandchild at the time) and I had Important Work to do before I started goofing around. He made it sound like a very significant job. *g* Anyway, that was the thing I wanted, and I have it now.

Now I'm home again, and due to the overlapping nature of our family vacations, I am still without Mary -- it's going to be like two weeks by the time everything is said and done, which is far longer than we've been separated since, uh, the year 2002. It's weird! I mean, it serves its purpose, since I have two more stories that need to get finished in the next few days, so I really shouldn't be lollygagging around letting Mary entertain me, but that's pragmatism, pah.

Okay, enough silly personal stuff. I have pretty much given up on my usual holiday project of reading all the DWNOGA stories all the way through, but I'm at least touching all of them and giving them a page or two's chance to win me over -- because you never know, with Secret Santa stories! I'll kick out a few recs, but like I said, I'm still in holiday-fic-writing mode and I've probably overlooked a ton; this is a very non-scientific survey this year.

it's that time of year again

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 15:20:54 GMT

Good news:
-- My Atlantis holiday story is done!
-- My finals are over!
-- I have downloaded Grace Under Pressure and am preparing to watch!

Bad news:
-- My popslash holiday story is not done, and in fact sucks and is ruining my life!
-- I am ruining Christmas with my inexplicable desire to spread joy over the course of an *entire holiday season* rather than welding it specifically to an ahistorical and politically selected date!
-- I am out of money, and my new student loan check has yet to come in! Begging loans from my parents is zero fun!

Ambiguous news:
-- I am thirty years old, in spite of the fact that I am convinced that I am LYING every time I say it. I checked my driver's licence twice and grilled my mother thoroughly, and it does appear to be true. Am baffled by this. Some of those years may or may not have been stolen from me and lived by somebody else; still checking into that. Still hope to be as hot as Marg Helgenberger or Kylie Minogue when I grow up, but as of this morning, few if any signs of that. Nonetheless, I remain reasonably mellow about this event.

time to quit ignoring homework and start ignoring finals!

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 20:11:22 GMT

Ah, winter again. The sore throat, the sudden, stricken recognition of one's dire poverty, the good movies finally being released, the profound questioning of one's career choices as term papers are handed in, the ~~liberal conspiracy against Christmas~~

I always want to say to those people: "I've been a certified, self-proclaimed liberal for nearly thirty years now, and I practice a non-Christian religion. If there were such a conspiracy, I really think they would have cc'ed me the memo." Really, if I don't know anything about the conspiracy, how well-organized can it be?

Also, I found this....

LITERATURE! - You have a story...oh yes, you do!
You are not quite sure what it is, but it
burns! It burns to be poured onto the page!
Write! Write I say! And thrill us with your
unique view of the world. YOU are your own
inspiration!

What Kind of Novel Should I Write?
brought to you by Quizilla
sort of unhelpful. I mean, can y'all be a little more *specific*? It's like those teen magazines that always told you to be yourself, and you were like, "Bitch, if I knew how to do that, I wouldn't have bought this magazine."

my first angel

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:11:48 GMT

I could do a post about Thanksgiving (so, so much vodka) or about last week's VMars (how can Duncan be so screwed up and yet so boring at the same time? mamma's gonna need some things from RadioShack, bwah! Logan/Eli -- nobody can try to have you killed like your ex-boyfriend, know what I mean?) or the way that my love of X-Files has finally paid off for me by making me look both smart and interesting in front of my 3000 professor (thanks, Darrin Morgan!) -- but no, there is no time for that. This post will be all about Rent.

First of all, you know, I liked it. I say this because, as you probably all know, most of the time being a geek for something means you complain about it A LOT, and I plan to complain a lot. I love Rent so very, very much, that pretty much two things were guaranteed to happen for me in the movie: A) I was going to be blissed out by it, and 2) I was going to pick it to fucking death.

I think, first, that I'll tackle the movie character-by-character, and then think about some of the structural changes and whatnot. ~~Who knows? Here goes~~ I will also try not to think I'm being witty by throwing in random lyric quotes. Bad Betty.

ADAM PASCAL/ROGER:
I just want to get this out of the way up front; this was the only performance I wasn't particularly chuffed by. He still has a really strong voice, but somehow, even after all those years (because of all those years?), he didn't seem to have a lot to bring *to* Roger, acting-wise. Compared to a lot of the others, he seemed, weirdly, to be both over-indulgent as a singer and under-expressive as an actor, and I was really just not that impressed. Roger is a critical and sort of complicated character (inasmuch as you can do complicated characters within the confines of the Broadway format), in that you have to buy him *both* as this antisocial hermit that all of his friends are worried about who is phobic about human contact of any kind, *and* as someone who was once heedless and headlong, who is pulled to Mimi because he sees his younger self in her. It bothered me that they dropped the line that told us that April *killed herself,* rather than just dying of AIDS, because I think that really added something to the character, his need to save Mimi from herself, his own self-immolating tendencies, his suicide-of-omission when he can't leave the house. I think Adam didn't quite do justice to the character in terms of revealing his conflicts and making him sympathetic in his inherent weaknesses; given that you can't help but contrast him with Collins (even though the movie chopped the holy hell out of the graveyard scene, more on that later), it's important to find Roger at least *forgiveable* for not being able to be the man that Collins is. I think just on the strength of the movie, I wouldn't have been feeling very charitable toward Roger by that point. I realize I know Roger best from Adam's performance, so this seems weird, but I think some of the minor script changes were really not to his advantage, and I think some of his songs were just not as well done -- there was not as much nuance in the latter parts of "Out Tonight" or as much real commitment to "One Song Glory" as I think he had back in the day; I don't know if he's not aging well or if he was better-directed back then or if he's bored with the whole show and just doesn't give as much of a damn anymore or what.

ROSARIO DAWSON/MIMI:
First of all, before I praise, let me just say it was a little sad to have most everyone *but* Daphne Rubin-Vega there. I mean, clearly there was no choice, because while they're all *too old for Yentl,* it's even more critical that Mimi be (able to pass for) a teenager. I liked Rosario a lot; I always like her, she's excellent in everything. It's just for sentimental reasons that it made me slightly sad at moments, and also, oddly? Rosario plays Mimi a lot whiter than Daphne did, and I missed the way that Nuyorican thing came out in Daphne's voice much more clearly; Rosario looked fine (not, like, *fine* -- well, yes -- clearly, *yes* -- but I mean fine for the role), but when she wasn't specifically trying to do the accent, she sounded a lot more like a girl from the suburbs than I felt like Mimi should. Anyway. I thought she was great. She had no chemistry at all with Adam, but I'm willing to blame him for that. Her addiction sequences in "Without You" were brilliantly done, she really does move like a dancer, particularly all those times she slithers up the fire escape, which is awesome, and she's just-- I love Rosario. Who's a rock star? Also, I *fucking loved* her hair. I mean, I know that sounds shallow, but it's almost kind of not, the depth and purity of the love I had for Mimi's hair. It was a hair *epiphany* for me, OMG -- do you ever have that? Where someone's got hair and you're all bedazzled by it and convinced that it is the pinnacle of human achievement in beauty and fabulousness? No? Just me, then? 'Kay.

JESSE MARTIN/COLLINS:
I mean, what do you even say? Jesse was my *rock* going into this movie, because I trust him completely as an actor, and my love for his Collins is unconditional and boundless and all of that. And yet, somehow, he managed to be *better than I expected.* There's something about a man who can stand in the back of a frame and deliver the line "Honey, what are you doing?" in a way that makes it *the best goddamn line of the movie* that -- you just have to step back in awe. Jesse, we truly are NOT worthy. The reason L&O is the almost-perfect vehicle for Jesse is that for the actors, it's entirely about getting in your reaction shots and your nuances of expression and your quick, sharp line readings, rather than about getting to do anything very interesting ("Did you get a look at the license plate?" is not inherently a good line the first time, let alone the eighty-fifth). He's great at it, because he's a talent without parallel when it comes to that kind of thing. I could do a whole review of the movie just off of Jesse Martin's facial expressions. I won't, but I could. (Okay, just one! His little "No, no, I was completely a man!" look to his friends when Angel says she found him "moaning and groaning" was worth the $5.50 I spent in and of itself. There, now I'm done.) I say it's the almost-perfect vehicle, because he doesn't get to sing in L&O, and so it falls short of perfection. What can you say about Jesse's voice, man? *Damn.* Also, I don't know if it was him doing those flips in "Santa Fe" or not, but if it was, go, Jesse! Angel and Collins are just one of those couples for me that I love with all my heart and can be made happy just by thinking about, and now I have a whole new layer of happy added from the delightfulness of watching Jesse's Collins watch Angel; he just conveys so much tenderness and admiration and boyish OMG-I'm-so-lucky! whenever he's looking at Angel, I'm amazed I didn't stroke out from squee in the theater. And seriously, if you don't tear up at least a little in the "Cover You" reprise, you are dead inside.

WILSON JERMAINE HEREDIA/ANGEL:
Pretty much more of the above. I often feel like I shouldn't adore Angel so much, because it's become kind of a stereotype, hasn't it? The gentle, sweet-natured queer/trans character who is utterly above reproach, and suffers but is universally loved and undeserving of all that pain, so we can all sit there and go, "Yeah, man, AIDS/homophobia/mean people TOTALLY DO suck!" And yet, I am easily manipulated, I suppose, because it totally works on me. I do love Angel. I love everything about Angel, from her stretchy tights and her flippy little skirts to the Timberlakey way she drums on stationary objects whenever she's sitting still to the way she gets her man to hold her pink purse for her before she clubs off the padlock on the door. There's nothing I don't love about Angel, and I have zero complaints about Wilson (did anyone else, back in the early 90s, used to get him confused with Wilson Cruz a lot?) I feel like I should say more, to truly impress upon you how happy I was with this aspect of the movie, but I've got nothing special, really, so it would just be a few more lines of "OMG, I love Angel! OMG, Wilson was awesome!" over and over again, and I'll spare you.

IDINA MENZEL/MAUREEN:
This was actually the surprise of the movie for me, how much I *adored* Maureen. She's never been my favorite character from the show, and I have no complaints about Idina, but no investment in her, either, and she was one of the people I was looking askance at because of her age. And yet, I loved her almost as much as I loved Jesse, and for many of the same reasons. I can't believe how expressive she is, and how genuine -- all those little Maureen quirks, which can come off as affected, completely registered with me as coming from this very good-hearted, warm, slightly daffy but intensely real free spirit. I found her so likeable that it almost undercut the "Maureen is the Devil in a Red Dress" vibe the show works -- that whole element of trust-her/don't-trust-her, love-her-but-know-it's-going-to-blow-up-in-your-face. It probably didn't work to the advantage of Joanne as a character, who comes off looking a little more overly controlling and paranoid than she should, but it was a true pleasure to watch Idina act. Also, she's no spring chicken anymore, but she's still a goddamn good-looking woman. I enjoyed the tres topical Commitment Ceremony addition to the show (and was that seriously Idina's mom? Because she looked so much like her it was freaking me out), and the reading of Maureen as someone who never tries to start trouble, but will *totally* strip at her own wedding reception just to prove that she would if you push her (also, Jesse leading the pack of people chasing them from room to room so as not to miss the good dirt was too awesome). Also, I had another near-stroke moment when she goes down on one knee and pops off one of her tacky silver rings right there on Madison Avenue or where the fuck ever, because it was just so endearing and so right for this version of Maureen -- not the performance-artist/diva of the original show, but just this intensely emotional and loving person who does whatever she wants whenever she wants and never waits to count the cost.

TRACIE THOMS/JOANNE:
I'm still just not sure I can wrap my head around skinny!Joanne; there's dissonance there that I'm having trouble shaking. You can't fault her voice, though; man, can she sing. I was impressed with her ability, as a relatively unseasoned actor, to hold her own against someone like Idina Menzel, who has that hugeness of presence and voice and personality that most women who've had substantial Broadway careers necessarily have. I'd heard complaints that they femmed Joanne up, and they did, but in all honesty I felt that they butched Maureen up, too, so that they both become more ambiguous characters in a way I felt added to their dynamic rather than subtracted from it. Maureen wasn't just the Femme Fatale, she was this kind of punky, kick-your-ass-and-make-you-like-it downtown girl, and Joanne doesn't just freak Mark out by being a better man than him, she freaks him out by being a better man than him and turning him on at the same time. Other than my above issue which is that I thought the movie gave Joanne less grounds to call Maureen on the carpet than the show did, so that at the places where you were like "Yeah! Tell her!" in the soundtrack, you're more inclined to be "Aw, give her a break!" in the movie, I have to say I found myself more charmed by the Maureen/Joanne in this version than I was before, not less. They have good chemistry. Though Joanne should still be four inches taller and eighty pounds heavier.

ANTHONY RUPP/MARK:
I thought his performance was good, especially given that he had to subtext his way through Mark's entire character arc, which got the boot from the movie script. None of that issue of being the one to live long enough to watch all his friends die and of using the distance of the camera to protect himself from it was there, but I felt like you could see it several times in Anthony's acting, particularly in the LifeSupport scenes. Watching him join in on the "Will someone care?" round was lovely, because there's this sense of, yes, he's apart from this, from what the rest of them are going through, but at the same time his issues are the same: he's living with AIDS, too, he's scared, too, he's got the same concerns about being strong enough to handle it and about loneliness and all that. I thought that was good. I just wondered if it would come across that strongly to someone who's only seen the movie, where they never expressly bring that up. I also really adored him in those scenes where his camera would shut off and you'd see this moment of agonized indecision: interrupt them? keep shooting? stop and sit down? be here, or film it? He did a lot in those little moments, which is all to his credit. Like I said, I hope the meaning of it stands when you have a script that doesn't make any mention of Mark's own internal conflicts.

Okay, now everything else.

It was slightly disconcerting, at first, to have all those recitatives translated into straight dialogue, but ultimately I think it was a good choice, and I enjoyed listening for what they kept and what they played with.

Even more disconcerting was the fuckery with the timeline, which totally tied my brain in knots. In the show, the entire first act takes place in one day, Christmas Eve, but in the movie, it apparently takes two days, with Mimi coming back for "Out Tonight" on the day after "Candle," with a second LifeSupport meeting in between. I couldn't quite puzzle that out in my head. Also, I really didn't like the fact that Mimi sings almost all of "Out Tonight" *to herself,* which seemed to me to defeat the purpose of it being her seduction song, that sort of devil on Roger's shoulder. I didn't like it that the first part is done in the context of her stage show, which introduces the possibility that this is Mimi's stage persona rather than her entire approach to life (I know people probably got it anyway, but it bothered me), and I realize there's something inherently insane about getting heated up about realism in a musical, but as she's walking down the alley doing that whole segment of the song about "you can get in, too, if you get in with me" etc., I couldn't stop going, girl, who the hell are you talking to? An aria is fine, I love me a good aria, but in the second person, it's just weird. Also, I think that Roger witnessing the slippage of her bravado in the "feels too damn much like home" bridge is crucial to their relationship: he sympathizes with her wildness *and* with her brokenness, he admires her *and* he wants to fix her.

The first act was pretty much great for me. "Santa Fe" has always been one of my favorite songs, and this version was unbelievably great; so was "La Vie Boheme." In the second act, they started tinkering a lot more, and I often found myself wondering what on earth they were thinking.

The Maureen/Joanne relationship detoured strangely; whereas in the show they're constantly on and off through the whole second act, in the movie they have this one climactic fight and then apparently never reunite -- unless they do. Because they are walking through the park together at the end, and yet the last we saw of them was their fight at the cemetery, so we're sort of left to guess for ourselves what their status is, and that bugged me. I'm willing to have the ambiguity at the end, where you see them reconnecting but you don't know where it'll go, but I dislike not knowing if they walked *into* the scene reconciled or not. Also, I just liked the volatility of their relationship, which you lose with only the one breakup. Also, you lose Maureen begging to be taken back, which rocks.

The Roger/Mimi relationship seemed even more oddly rewritten. In the show, there's this ongoing friction over Benny, which I think the movie really downplays -- since Benny *doesn't* claim to have gotten it on with Roger's girlfriend, it seems slightly more mean-spirited of Roger to turn that into an issue, and maybe they were trying to downplay it for that very reason. "Without You" seems to imply that her heroin use is much more the issue than jealousy, which is actually a shift that I'm happy with; that *would* be a huge issue for someone who is himself a recovering addict, let alone someone who has cause to be *immediately* concerned with her health, rather than in just a general "morphine is bad for you" kind of way (does that make anyone want to see Crow: The Musical? No? Me either, then).

They blew it with me by cutting "Contact." They blew it with me A LOT. First, because it's just a great song. Second, because it's, gah, hot like fire, and in a show that's all about rebellious decadence, doesn't it seem like someone should be getting laid? The music itself is hot, just being reminded that these people like each other like THAT is hot, and on stage it's done in silhouette behind these white curtains, and it's just, Jesus, totally fucking *hot.* But the third and most important reason, is that it's Angel's *moment.* Yes, you have all that staging in "Without You" that contrasts the Roger/Mimi relationship falling apart for reasons that could be prevented with the Collins/Angel relationship falling apart for reasons totally beyond their control -- but then, in the show, *Angel recuperates.* Angel's real exit, the real last time we see him, is this short but utterly glorious moment of ecstatic love and sexuality and joy when he does his "take me, I love you" thing, and that should be how Angel goes out. Yes, having him waste away is full of operatic pathos and whatnot, but hell, genre convention requires singing before you die, and more importantly, it's a million times better to have *that* be Angel's legacy, in a sense, that ability to dance and more importantly to give himself over and trust. And it's kind of schmoopy and melodramatic to cut from Angel's deathbed to his funeral, but holy God, the cut from that song to Collins's "it's over" and then into the music for the funeral? It's fucking amazing. It's brilliant, and there's no justification on earth for erasing it entirely from the movie.

So now I'm grumpy, and they go on to butcher that whole last movement in the graveyard. They take out critical information: like, oh, say, *Mimi's dying,* so that Roger running away makes no particular sense except for petulance over getting dumped, and then they ditch the "goodbye, love / glory" piece that's not only incandescently beautiful, but that really is there to highlight the fact that when Roger and Mimi talk about their relationship *they know* that what they're talking about is when and how they'll die. They get rid of the fight between Roger and Mark, and with it the climax of Mark's whole character arc, along with the compare-and-contrast with Mark and Roger's struggles with authenticity and courage. Joanne's solidarity with Mimi, btw, also doesn't make much sense if you don't realize she's been over the same ground with Maureen again and again, so see above on the weirdness of their arc. Also, while the music on the "Cover You" reprise was above reproach, it kept bugging me that there were like twelve people in the church. Angel knew everybody and everybody loved Angel: on stage there's a reason you can't pack in three hundred extras for one scene, but that's why you film movies! They totally blew an opportunity to have a really touching scene, with all these people, bums and suits and drag queens and Hispanic grandmas in headscarves, every kind of person, file grievingly past Angel's coffin. Because that's how it would really happen, he would really have affected all kinds of people that way.

Anyway. From there on it's not so bad, even though I was still grumpy. I liked the looking-for-Mimi stuff, although I did miss the answering-machine montage. Maureen and Joanne find her in the park -- were they still searching? out for a walk together? wtf? -- and I don't think Mimi's delirium was as good in prose; most of the movie doesn't suffer from losing the recitatives, but that bit I think does. And then she fades out, and Roger sings that slack-ass song that even Jonathan Larson didn't like, and dude, seriously. Replace that fucking song; it's not good. This was your chance! Jonathan would forgive you, I know it! Also, then you'd have an original song to be eligible for an Oscar. Use your heads! Also, did I mention? The song's not good, and I didn't like Roger anyway by that point, so it could have been more dramatic, as far as I was concerned.

Nevertheless, the very very end was nice, with all of them hanging onto each other while they watched their One Big Year flicker by on Mark's screen, and you really can't ruin that ending musically. It's amazing how something so simple as a repeating pattern of two critical lines from earlier songs can serve as such an amazing, uplifting finale; I think a lot of the sheer genius of the show for me is in that finale, with the "No day but today" and the "I die without you" escalating upward and upward, over and over, almost religiously. It sums up what the show is about for me, which isn't really the struggles of pretentious urban artistes worried about their artistic credibility, but just this idea that there are a million ways to sell out, and all of them boil down to turning away from the things and people you love, not holding onto them as fiercely and as long as you can. Everybody in the movie does well; it surely helps that the majority of them go so far back with each other, but even if it's just their mad acting skillz, they really end it with this sense that they've all come home and that they value each other much more now than they ever did and won't blow it with each other again, however hard it gets. I felt less grumpy.

And that's all I can think of right now. Maybe I can come up with another dozen or two k after I see it a second time *g*

the non-spoiler spoiler post

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 14:52:58 GMT

Aquarium, "The Hive" : OMG, Rodney!

HP & Goblet of Fire: Alan Rickman totally pwns that franchise, even when he's barely in the film. When I read the books, I still have no particular attachment to Snape, but OMG, ALAN! You are hysterically funny and weirdly hot and I adore you way beyond the bounds of anything reasonable.

Rome: Dammit. Nice going, Vorenus.

*

The best sitcom you're not watching right now is Out of Practice, aka the Stockard & Henry Show. How much do I love the both of them? I am also, of course, not unswayed by the fact that one of the characters is a lesbian (the very fine Paula Marshall, whom Sorkinites will remember as Jenny the Adult Film Actress from Sports Night), but mostly? Stockard Channing and Henry Winkler are awesome and wonderful as a divorced couple who seem to be bickering for old times' sake, but who mostly understand each other too well not to appreciate each other. I realize that if you're watching the Aly & Neil Patrick show at 8:30, then you have to survive Two and a Half Men to get to Out of Practice, but you should. It's cool, I think, to have a sitcom that isn't about raising children or about single people and their wacky search for love. Out of Practice is a family sitcom, but the three kids are grown professionals, so it's a lot about the relationships you have with your parents as adults, and the way you see them as real people rather than just as Mom and Dad. Also, Regina should totally steal more of Oliver's girlfriends; she should do so at *every* opportunity. And hang onto the jewelry he gave to them, hee.

*

Progress Reports on My Holiday Stories (edited for content):

SGA - I think I can handle this one. I told Mary my concept and she kind of rolled her eyes and implied that it sounded out of character to her, which I guess should have me worried, but what the hell. No guts, no glory. We can't let canon push us around, now, can we? Also, I don't think it's going to turn out as smutty as I had originally imagined, which is unlike me.

popslash - I've got *nothing.* I'm literally clueless. The best I can say is that Mary and I have an eight-hour car ride tonight to Virginia for Thanksgiving, and maybe between us we'll come up with something.

threesome - I just want to say, I got a really tough assignment here. You get four options, and two of mine were for fandoms that mean literally zero to me. So then I had these other two, which were fandoms I could hack, but one requested a character that's become prominent since I slacked off on watching the show, so I didn't feel comfortable with that, and I was left with one feasible option. Now, I have come up with a story that I really love, but here's my question:

What's the fan politics on villainous characters for gift fics? Because, okay, I'm writing Character X, right? And he is, canonically speaking, kind of a bastard, but he is a big woobie for the fandom (I don't think this is too spoilery, because God knows fandom loves their bastard/woobies all around the board). But in this story, he'd kind of end up being a bastard. Is that okay? I've done some research on my recipient, and she doesn't seem to be a Crazy Character X fan, but still, maybe that isn't how she likes her X, or maybe it's a little dark for a Christmas story (although unlike last year, I'm not planning to write anything where a title character takes a severe intestinal wound and dies slowly -- no need to thank me!)

I don't know, the thing is, I like dark stories. I'm better at them. And I like my Character X on the darker side, and not all woobified. Also, it would be an *awesome* story, if I can pull it together right. Also, I have no other ideas. But I don't want to ruin Christmas for my recipient or anything. And objectively speaking, though I love this story personally, I can see that it'll be one that people will either love or absolutely hate, depending on what baggage they have surrounding the characters and what they're looking for in a story like this. So, given that I'm writing it for someone I don't know well, should I try to come up with something different, something a little more festive and crowd-pleasing?

what do i want to be when i grow up, again?

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 15:55:07 GMT

For those people waiting with bated breath (pretty much just Mary, I think), the werewolf novel competition has reached the finals round, and I am not in it. Frankly, after waiting five months on this, I'm just as pleased to be let off the hook. Although I am sort of sad about these characters, because I liked them. And I used all my Good Fanfic Writer Mojo to tailor them specifically to the demands of WW canon, so they will be difficult if not impossible to reinvent as OCs. Hmph. If they'd only been more generic and interchangeable, dammit!

Anyway, I should still write a novel, man. I just don't know which one.

Also, Nabokov = crackfic. I'm saying.

on the subject of girls, gen and ungen

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:12:58 GMT

I haven't decided whether or not I'm supposed to like Gia, but God help me, I so do. I liked her all the way back in Watchword, when she and her dad were all cheerfully like, "Hi, welcome to your shameless bribe! It would so totally be worth your while to like me!" She's kind of like a relentlessly upbeat Cordelia -- yes, it is all about Gia, but on the other hand, she thinks you're super, too! She thinks everyone is super! And nobody gets her humor! And her clothes are totally not a statement! (Best line of the night: "Your trellis is a whore.") I would not be opposed to attempting some Veronica/Gia at some point in the future, assuming they don't A) turn her hideously evil or B) kill her. Given that she's a girl who seems to like Veronica, I'm expecting B by the end of the season. But no! Gia! I like her, dammit. They should keep her.

jennyo is doing a gen ficathon for female characters, the which you might look at signing up for. I myself have THREE HOLIDAY CHALLENGE STORIES going on (whose idea was that?), so I think I'm going to refrain, but it should be cool. In the spirit of that, here are a handful of female-centric stories, slash and gen, that I think should be written. For what it's worth.

1) anything about Sara Sidle that doesn't involve her crush on Gil. I think we all know about her crush on Gil. The series played it to death, and then fandom reduced it to a fine powder. We GET it. She has a crush on Gil. OTOH, she appears to date more than anyone on the team except Warrick, back when he was a single guy, so we can surely assume that Thoughts of Gil do not necessarily rule her life.

2) A story about Lianne Mars. She's just an interesting, sad character to me -- Keith being about the coolest man in the world, he must have married a cool woman, and then there's surely a story there about her loss of control, and the tension between her alcoholism and her family life. I can totally understand why Veronica has kind of moved to a place of demonizing her mom by now, but I think there's probably a lot there for a good story.

3) Practical Magic incest. Okay, it wouldn't have to be incest; I'd read any Practical Magic fic. But it should be incest, because hi, weird about each other. Why should Numb3rs fandom have all the fun? I once toyed with the idea of doing a Charmed/Practical Magic crossover, because, I mean, yes. Paige and Gilly? Yes.

4) post-show fic about Franny Vecchio. I know there is some, but there should be more. This is also good crossover territory; you could add her to the cast of whatever police procedural you like. I think it would be interesting if, when push came to shove, Franny was too timid to be comfortable as a cop, but went into Crime Scene Investigation instead. As my cable package is always telling me, you can do it through community college. And sure, she's pretty scattered, but maybe she has suprising powers of concentration when she applies herself. I can see her being all, "I can tell the difference between 750 shades of berry lipstick at a glance -- tell me I don't have an eye for detail!" Or not. I don't care, I just want to know what she does with her life -- instead of or in addition to having ninety babies.

5) Ada/Ruby from Cold Mountain. Yes, I realize this is the second time I've suggested that people should write more Nicole Kidman slash. What, I'm gonna apologize for that? Write more Nicole Kidman slash!

6) post-series Hermione fic. Like I am with many clever, self-possessed adolescent girls in real life, I just get very squeaky and excited thinking about how cool she'll be as a grown-up. She should be a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

7) JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS FIC. Guys, I've been looking for this for three years now. Seriously, we wants it! GSF, or really even gen. Seeing Rosario Dawson do the publicity rounds for Rent has reminded me how much I love that movie. Who's a rock star?

8) Kendall/Greenlee from All My Children. You'll get triple bonus points with marythefan for this one. And seriously, the producers really couldn't be making it any easier for you if they tried. This must be them mollifying their Angry Lesbian Fanbase after Bianca fucked off to Europe. *g*

9) Donna Moss gen. (I keep wanting to call her "Donna Mars." My subconscious is rooting for a crossover?) Yes, I am actually a frustrated Josh/Donna shipper, but OTOH, they're doing this cool thing now where they're letting Donna have some personhood outside of Josh, and I think this is A) better for the Josh/Donna relationship, and B) cool. I'm down with the zeitgeist on this one. Let Donna Be Donna!

10) Rayanne/Sharon from My So-Called Life. Possibly futurefic. Hell, they live in Pittsburgh; there should be a QaF crossover. God knows QaF needs cooler lesbians. I really love the idea of Rayanne/Sharon, because they have a particular type of opposites-attract that I enjoy, that whole free-spirit/bundle-of-nerves that I tend to want to slash when it comes to female characters (Josie/Mel, Ruby/Ada, Faith/Buffy, Shane/Jenny -- oh, shut up, I don't want to hear about it -- Chloe/Lana, Lily/Veronica, Gillian/Sally, Tatum/Sidney. I betcha I would have liked Kennnedy/Willow if Kennedy hadn't sucked.) Anyway, I can totally see Rayanne and Sharon in their 20s, and what kind of dykes they'd be -- Rayanne would be all tragically hip and "don't label me!" and Sharon would assiduously work at electing city councilors and defeating propositions and all like "I'm just like anyone else!" And they'd both be vaguely ashamed of each other, but also, should anyone dare to suggest that they should be vaguely ashamed of each other? They'd be OUTRAGED. Nobody else gets to criticize their girl.

ETA: I can't believe I forgot this one!
11) Mae/Doris from A League of Their Own. Because they are so clearly married. God, yes.

i heart my shuffle function

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 16:09:32 GMT

Music memery -- my very favorite kind -- gakked from thisisbone, who is totally shiny, and sends me pictures of Ronon's little belly, which make me less crampy and tired than I was before.

Question: What do you think of me, ~~ITunes~~ pretty silver not-at-all inferior Rio?
Answer: "Confessions of a Broken Heart," Lindsay Lohan

it thinks I should call my dad. Or possibly actually do that Buffy/Giles vid to this song that I keep saying I want to do.

Question: Will I have a happy life?
Answer: "Infatuation," Christina Aguilera

in fairness, I've seen my playlist, and this is probably the closest it could come to an actual happy song

Question: What do my friends really think of me?
Answer: "Skin," Madonna

I always suspected.

Question: Do people secretly lust after me?
Answer: "All Day Long I Dream About Sex," JC Chasez

Okay, that's two in a row. Guys, seriously! I'm not as hot as my characters are, I'm sorry.

Question: What should I do with my life?
Answer: "Layla," Eric Clapton

uh? Sleep with my friends' wives and write about it?

Question: Why must life be so full of pain?
Answer: "Stalker Fever," Eric Alexandraxis

The Patriot Act?

Question: How can I maximize my pleasure during sex?
Answer: "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Nirvana

cynicism and lowered expectations? More dysfunctional relationships? Heroin? Teenagers?

Question: Will I ever have children?
Answer: "Harder to Breathe," Maroon 5

yes, and they will totally grow up to resent me

Question: Will I die happy?
Answer: "Senorita," Justin Timberlake

a happy song about an unhappy girl. Deep, yo.

Question: Can you give me some advice?
Answer: "Livin' La Vida Loca," Ricky Martin

black cats and voodoo dolls, or funky cheap hotels? Maybe I just need to be a better chaos queen.

Question: What do you think happiness is?
Answer: "Don't Fear the Reaper," Blue Oyster Cult

I would be a smartass about that, but I honestly can't argue with it.

Question: What's my favorite fetish?
Answer: "Through With Love," Destiny's Child

uh...masturbation? Does that even count as a fetish? Of course, there's also that whole Michelle/God thing at the end. Sex with deities could be kinky.

Question: Am I complete freak?
Answer: "Tubthumping," Chumbawumba

but they're never gonna keep me down!

wassail, unknown popslasher!

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 16:03:20 GMT

Dear Secret Santa:

So it's not been the best year for this fandom, but that was then and this is now! Can you feel that seasonal love in the air? It's the time of nostalgia and tradition and whatnot, and we have that working in our favor.

In other words: Don't panic. All I want for Christmas is some hot buttered rum and a little time spent with a boyband. However, I know that you may not be as zen as I am right now, because you're stressing about what kind of story to write. (I am not stressing about what kind of story to write -- I'm not sure why that is. I think I may be in denial.) So in the tradition of the SeSa, here are some things you might find useful to think about when stressing about what kind of story to write:

1) If you choose the NSync pairing, remember that I am bitter and depressed, so plis to not torture me any further. Cuteness and togetherness are good things. In terms of time period, your safest bet would probably be that 1998-2000 stretch when they were all together all the time and, you know, famous and whatnot. Those are happy years, in my head.
2) If you choose the Backstreet pairing, you probably have a lot greater latitude, because of how cute and happy they all are right this minute. Actually, because they're happy and together in RL, you can actually abuse them in fic rather more without traumatizing me permanently, so if you're the type (like me) who finds it easier to write restless angst, you might consider the BSB pairing more heavily. Of course, maybe you only write one fandom or the other, in which case you don't need help choosing a pairing, and I'm being of no use to you right now.
3) AUs. Okay, here's my thing about AUs, which I mention because they were so common last year that I expect a lot of people will be wanting to undertake them this year, too. Here's the thing. I like AUs, but I only like really crackheaded, flashy, bombastic AUs. In other words, I don't like stories where they're college students or waiters or librarians or whatever, so much as I like stories where they're...rescuing French nobles from the guillotine, or demon hunters, or, I don't know, cancan dancers? If they're going to work in a coffee shop, at least locate that coffee shop on a Martian colony. What I'm saying is, if you are the kind of writer who digs AUs, that's cool, but I actually have a real life, and I prefer stories where something a little more entertaining than that goes on.

I realize these are not very specific, which is either the right thing to do, or kind of annoying, or maybe both. I like porn a really lot, but I don't absolutely require it in a good story. I like the use of minor characters for the sake of verissimilitude. That's all I've got for you this morning, I think. I'm sorry!

Anyway, I enjoy SeSa every year no matter what, so don't feel like you're somehow responsible for the quality of my holiday experience or anything like that. Just write a story, try not to kill yourself doing it, and enjoy everybody's contributions to the cause.

these can't really be CSI spoilers, can they?

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:42:11 GMT

OMFG, Nicky, you look like an over-the-hill gay porn star with that tack-ass moustache. What *was* that thing before it died on your lip? For shame, Nicky! I know that you look, like, fifteen years old a lot of the time, and as you're probably twice that, it must be annoying, and perhaps you think the facial hair makes you look older. Trust me, older is only ONE of the things it makes you look. It's not worth it, man. All those neat scenes where you were arguing in Spanish and slinging guns around? One-tenth as neat as they would have been if you weren't wearing that godawful moustache.

Also, heeeee, Greg, okay, I get it already! You're sleeping with Grissom! So you can be all snot-nosed and bratty and he'll take it calmly and even look like he still thinks you're kinda cute. So good for you! Because I like you bratty, too. And you totally need to take Grissom to the track with you and show him all about things he can't control. Yes.

You know who else I really liked for no very significant reasons? The hot hooker with the funny-looking rhinestone-studded glasses who was so fantastically mellow, all like, "Huh, SWAT team, that makes sense. I'll be on my way then." I guess that's Vegas for you.

And, not related to this but not incidentally:

THANK YOU for those of you who contributed to my pregnancy folklore assignment. Not for the first time, I wonder how anybody ever gets an education without a good flist.

hey, anybody wanna help me with my homework?

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 23:19:24 GMT

I'm collecting folklore about pregnancy for a class project. Don't worry! You don't have to be pregnant for this.

I'm interested in any superstitions or customs or whatnot you've ever heard surrounding pregnancy: how to increase your chances of getting or not getting pregnant, how you can tell what sex your baby is going to be, etc. What does heavy vs. light morning sickness mean, carrying high vs. carrying low -- really, anything that someone once told you (folklore being technically defined basically as "that stuff that someone once told you") surrounding pregnancy.

The only info I need along with it is a) where you're from and b) if you can remember who told you this and under what circumstances. (In childhood, when you were pregnant, at a baby shower?)

No obligation to buy! I won't continue to bug you or anything; this is sheerly a collection project, not a series of interviews or anything complicated like that. Please and thank you! (Commenting to this post would be best, but you can e-mail me if you need to for some reason.)

who's gonna write me this story?

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 17:09:06 GMT

You know, the one where Nicky & his crazy feminine energy becomes Cassie's new mommy?

And it's supposed to be just temporary, right, while they get in touch with her extended family. But Nick really flings himself into it, because of course he's still pretty freaked out from that Nick-in-a-box thing, and kind of lonely, and, well, *Nick.* He's making her giant breakfasts when he gets home from work and fixing up a little room for her, which she won't sleep in because she doesn't want to be by herself, so they end up every night (that she's not sharing the Willows' babysitter) with Nick sitting up all night on the couch and she's all wormed up against him with her arms around his waist asleep. And Gris comes back and he's all like, "I leave for a week and you let Nicky adopt a vic?" and Nicky's all, "TEMPORARILY!" and yet he's totally attached to her, and he's meeting with her teachers and her shrink and acting like her new mommy. And Catherine thinks it's about time and Warrick doesn't think DFACS (what's the Nevada equiv?) is going to let him keep her, so he's kind of working on Lisa to consider being foster parents, them being all wedded-couple and her a doctor and all that.

And Greg is somehow...kind of upset about the whole thing, although he knows he's being a dick so he can't say so. Because he and Nick have totally broken up, and that's fine, it was a mutual thing, but suddenly Nick is completely invested in someone else, and is Greg such an asshat that he could be jealous of a little girl who witnessed her family's murder? Kind of, yes, and he has the appropriate shame, but STILL. They're all domestic, with the breakfast and the shopping and adoring each other, and he never realized until now that he was kind of in the back of his mind counting on getting back together with Nick when he was ready and had his career better squared away and everything. And maybe they would have had a family or something! It could happen! But not anymore, because Nick already has a family, and she doesn't give a damn about Greg, but she does kind of like Archie -- Archie! Who is totally not even Nick's *boyfriend,* it's just a fuckbuddy thing! And it's ridiculous how much Greg is obsessing when it's got nothing to do with him, but...it's got nothing to do with him, and he's not okay with that.

Meanwhile, of course, DFACS is *not* so keen on this arrangement, but they can't get any of the family's screwed-up relatives to take her. Nick wants to adopt her, but they gently explain that, you know, single guys don't normally get to take strange little girls home and keep them, and Nick's wondering if it would help his case or not if he said he was totally gay, when all of a sudden Sara's like "Me! I'm his fiancee!" Because Sara's not sure if this is a terribly good idea or not, but she's SURE that foster care sucks and there is no way she's going to stand around and lie to brokenhearted Nicky about how everything'll turn out just fine as they re-traumatize Cassie by prying her out of Nick's house.

And then some other stuff happens, and maybe Nick's parents show up and are wise. And Nick has healing, and possibly Sara has some healing, and Greg comes back and admits that okay, he was a moron when he said he wanted to break up, and they have some heart-wrenching first-time-since-nearly-died sex, and, and. Yes.

jinx!

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 15:11:14 GMT

So my advisor says that I am entirely on track and shiny (she didn't say I was shiny, but how cool would that have been?) for graduating in the spring. I still have to take a Georgia Constitution test and get my AP scores in line so I can skip the reading/writing tests that I've been blowing off for a year and a half now, and get my transfer credit for Asian-American Women's History approved both toward my minor requirements and my A&S multicultural requirement -- oh, and also take some classes next semester and PASS ENGL 3K this semester (I got a D on that midterm, which...yay? passing?) -- and, obviously, navigate whatever brain-splattering last-minute bureaucratic traumas will inevitably pop up....

But all that being said, I should graduate in May.

Me and Veronica Mars *g*

scully would be so ashamed of me

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 00:33:55 GMT

From Astro.com, where you can get your whole whackingly confusing natal chart for free and in an instant if you should so desire, along with some commentary...like....

The Moon was in your twelfth house at the time of birth. Secretly, you enjoy a love of romance and adventure that lends a bit of excitement to your daydreaming. It is possible that the little popularity that you may enjoy in this life will be from some very reserved and secretive circles where your merits are recognized. It can be expected that you will be successful in positions that call for solitude or remote locations.

So, dear Fandom, thank you for appreciating my slightly exciting daydreams and granting me the small measure of attention and approval which I am due in this lifetime.

fandoms what aren't actually my fandoms

Tue, 18 Oct 2005 23:01:02 GMT

Okay, despite having sworn off boybands just a few entries down in this very lj, can I just induce y'all to ignore that for one tiny second while I claim that my boys rock? Because, I mean, when I could not, in a blind taste-test, distinguish between, the plot of a story where Chris buys Justin at auction in a bidding war with a member of the Backstreet Boys and the plot of ACTUAL REALITY where Lance buys Justin at auction in a bidding war with a former member of 98 Degrees? Even though one is clearly a smashingly lovely piece of porn written by [dear God, I don't know who -- if it was you, claim credit! I have the story saved, but not on this computer!] [ETA: nopseud is the writer in question. I knew that.] and the other is equally clearly, have I mentioned? ACTUAL REALITY? Mmmmm, that's good canon....

Also, on a thoroughly unrelated note, you know what I've finally given in and admitted I have great fannish love for -- not just I-like-this-show, but the heart-pounding, squee-emitting, oh-my-god-whaddaya-mean-no-new-episode-next-week-you-bastards love for? Veronica Mars. I do. I confess. No point pretending otherwise.

Now, you see, I watched Veronica Mars only very intermittently in first season, and at that point I watched it A) for the sort of freaky, crackheaded, spastic-adorable-kitty loveliness and charm that is Veronica Mars/Kristen Bell, B) because very few bald men rock my world like Enrico Colantoni, and I loved what a great relationship Mars the Senior and Mars the Offspring have with each other, and also 3) the dialogue, which induces in me the daffy, banter-nerd delight that few things not written by Joss Whedon do. This seems like a lot to love! And it is. However, two things held me back: the fact that Veronica was more or less the only not-dead female character of any significance whatsoever (in Anno Domini 2004, I shouldn't have to put up with that, should I?), and the focus on Veronica's love life, which prominently featured A) Logan, who is a great character in his own right, but it's hard to expend much energy hoping that Veronica will suddenly morph into the unmitigated masochist you'd have to be in order to want to hitch your destiny to Logan's, and 2) Duncan, who is boring and I don't like him. So between not liking her boyfriend options and getting a little weighed down by the testosterone content overall, I didn't quite get my teeth into it.

These conditions have not so much changed. There's still, girl-wise, just Veronica, and dead!Lily, and now dead!Meg, and hey, a new girl who's intentionally horrible and Veronica wants her dead, which isn't quite what I had in mind. Veronica is pair-bonded to the boring one, not the fucked-up one, which from a political point of view and I guess for Veronica's own sake is a good thing, but it still leaves something to be desired for me the viewer. But you know what? I don't care anymore. I don't. I yield. I love Veronica Mars anyway. Screw you, Lost! You got served by UPN!

I'm just going to solve both my problems by firmly imagining that Chloe Sullivan gets to defect from her crappy show and seek political asylum in Neptune. There's no downside there.

ladies and menfolk, we got ourselves some fic

Sun, 16 Oct 2005 04:40:10 GMT

The Fortune-Teller

This is a Serenity/BtVS crossover (watch out for the SERENITY SPOILERS) I wrote for the Tara challenge on femslash_minis.

Serenity/Buffy crossovers are harder to write than you might think. I've done weirder, but somehow I found this one particularly tough, and I have to admit that when push comes to shove, it's not so much a crossover as a post-Serenity story that just happens to have Tara pop up in it. I don't know, I did what I could with it. Kaylee's fun to write, though, and I've been keen to do a post-Serenity fic, so now I can say I've done it.

Anyway, it probably needs 40k more to make any real sense out of it, but it's got its charms, and you might want to give it a try.

fail fail fuck fail

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 23:50:33 GMT

So my midterm this morning? Not good news.

See, the thing is, Betty is incapable of scanning poetry. It requires some particular part of the brain that she lacks entirely. This is not a major life handicap, unless you happen to be an English major, which -- oh, wait! Betty is. Betty is also required to pass this crit class in order to GRADUATE.

Anyway. There was a midterm. Keats was involved, and John Donne. It got ugly. The test was, I think, not passed, particularly because I spent so much time wrestling the fucking scansion (unsuccessfully) into submission that I didn't have enough time left over to answer all the questions I *did* know the answers to.

Not shiny, friends.

Perhaps the trauma of the event is what led me to think that signing up for fanfic100 was a good idea in any way, shape, or form. But, I mean -- nobody had Ronon yet! What was I supposed to do?

i would walk a thousand miles

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 01:48:36 GMT

No, see, but I did drive 915 miles on Tuesday -- 915 miles, six states, 14 and a half hours. The good side, however? I got to drive it in my braaaand new car, which has air conditioning, a tape deck (through which I can route my mp3 player), cruise control, 70k miles on it, and, oh yeah, an engine that works. Purrrr.

Oddly, I happened to have three classes cancelled for Rosh Hashanah, and that was excuse enough to skip my fourth class and take a long weekend trip home -- first time I'd been there since a year ago last February. I always forget how much I *love* Columbia; I don't know if the town is objectively as cool as I feel that it is, or if it's just deep in my bones somehow. Anyway, it was delovely. My parents are overbearing but wonderful, as usual. The weather is better, the food is better, the people are better -- everything about life is just *better* there. Even when it's not, you know what I mean? I mean, admittedly, the weather and the people aren't *always* better (though the food pretty much always is), except...they are. Everything's up to date in Kansas City.

The other day, as I was trying to catch an afternoon nap, my Justin Timberlake poster inexplicably fell off my closet door. This made me sort of sad, as the symbolism is rather unavoidable. It's been a long, slow descent into alternating bouts of depression and bitter resentment, this whole post-Sync era, and I suppose this means the divorce is final. Popslash was my longest active fandom, running approximately from the spring of 2001 to sometime this summer -- a bit over four years. I mean, I haven't forsworn my band or anything like that, but I'm ready to admit now that I'm officially no longer on active duty as a popslasher. I have several things I'd like to finish, and there's always the chance that something thrilling will happen and make me want to put my feet in again, but, you know, I was always one of those people who had a hard time staying connected to a closed fandom, and now that they've declared a Greatest Hits album without a single new track on it, I think NSync is a closed fandom by anyone's standards. Although the promotional junkets on the GH album should be interesting.

Oddly, my love of pop music has survived my love of the big, gay pop groups. You can say what you wanna say about Ashlee Simpson, but I think her new single is awesome.

So here I am, in the journal that I started for my RPS-writing personality, having a bit of a fannish identity crisis. I've been writing Atlantis fic over on my hth_the_first journal. I'm being pretty geeky over Battlestar Galactica, although I've never had the urge to write for that fandom. I still love CSI, and naturally Serenity has given my love of Firefly a new lease on life (more on that to come). I'm reading books lately, which, go figure! I don't know, I guess I'm pretty much a free-range fangirl at this point in my life; I lack an overriding fannish passion, but you know, life is like that sometimes, I guess. I can be single and independent!

Also, look! New default icon; I've been using the same one for at least a year now, probably longer, and I've been trying to settle on an updated one. I'm feeling very high-fantasy lately, and I've always had a thing for Eowyn; although I was never entirely pleased with how PJ used her in the movie (why even reference the Shield Maidens of the Rohirrim if you're going to, you know, give all the weapons to ten-year-old boys and none to the women?), and although Miranda Otto was never quite how I had imagined Eowyn physically, her performance really grew on me. I like the use of the quote on this icon because it strikes me as suitably feminist -- the idea that Eowyn's sadness and frustration, at least early in her arc, isn't a result of something wrong with *Eowyn* that needs fixing, but something wrong with the situation she's been forced into. And isn't that kind of the point? Everyone's always so keen to tell women how they should make their lives and themselves better; self-improvement projects are a way of life for a lot of women, and it's still so unspeakably radical to say, hey, maybe *I'm* not the problem, here. Maybe I'm depressed and pissed off for some really excellent reasons. So that's kind of my political stance at the moment: all my anger directed healthily outward. I got the icon from etoilepb, who has a kabillion supremely cool LotR icons on her homepage, if you're in the market for some.