rise above it

[aria]

A few things that have been percolating in my brain:

i. I'm writing a fic with ghost!Fraser haunting Kowalski, which is fun in a slightly horrible way, but as always when I write things that distress me I'm simultaneously tossing around other fic ideas in my head (ie at this juncture ones where Fraser is not dead). The idea-in-the-shower du jour is a due South/Young Wizards fusion, because if anyone in the universe is the posterchild for a YW-style wizard, it's Benton Fraser. I think it could be a genuinely fun and weird and engaging story, too -- he first comes to Chicago on the trail of the killers of his father, of course, and because I think it would be brilliantly hilarious, obviously Welsh and Vecchio are the Chicago area's Advisory wizards. I'd probably age Fraser way down to being in his late teens so that he can still do his action-hero thing, and maybe Kowalski can be a teenage wizard too, and likes to go to Vecchio's house and yell at him when he's stressed out about his current assignment. Obviously Frannie cannot appear in this story because she would be stunningly indistinguishable from Carmela. Anyway, that's for another day, when I am not writing upsetting things about Fraser being a ghost.

ii. Slightly relatedly, I am way too excited about Eastwick airing tonight. Ask me about how I love horrible tasteless silly things! Seriously, I pretend to have taste sometimes, but for whatever reason I caved and watched High School Musical for the first time ever yesterday, and really loved it in a hiding-behind-my-hands going "why god why" way, so ... I think my excitement about Eastwick is a related animal. Of tastelessness.

iii. And in news that is hopefully unrelated to my tastelessness, what I have been more seriously percolating in my brain is the idea of getting a tattoo. This has lots to do with various of my friends going "DO IT" and even more to do with the fact that I recently realized that since I was about nine I've had the same answer to the "What would you get if you got a tattoo?" question, which means I am obviously pretty damn sure of the design. (The Elvish script of the One Ring poem around my ankle, to be specific. Because -- pretty, unobtrusive, and the Lord of the Rings was my fannish place before I even had one, and will always be really important in a way that doesn't have much to do with my various mayfly-attention-span fandom enthusiasms.) This of course means the new questions are not of the are you sure/wouldn't you regret it/&c variety, but instead questions like, "Aria, tattoos are pretty expensive, aren't you supposed to be worrying about funds for grad school?" and "Aria, don't you hate, say, needles and pain and introducing foreign substances to your body, which by the way includes ink?" I believe those are the pressing questions. THOUGHTS PLZ.

Comments

[nextian]

iii. Hah, coincidentally I have also been percolating getting a grad-tattoo as well. A lot of time spent at literary_tattoos. I have a concern about it, which is NOT "wouldn't you regret it," but "do you really want to ink extremely evil words of power around your ankle? What if your ankle starts attracting hobbits who want to throw it into a volcano?"

[marina]

I believe that if the last problem indeed arises, your flist can be counted on to come with an equally weird solution.

[aria]

WHAT ARE YOU THINKING OF GETTING! This is very important. & awesome.

I think the answer to "What if your ankle starts attracting hobbits who want to throw it into a volcano?" is "But I love hobbits!" Also someone suggested that obviously I should get a tattoo that only appears if I'm exposed to intense heat, but I'm not so sure about that one.

[nextian]

I used to think I'd get a &? tattoo and that's still a strong contender, but. There are no places on my body I want a tattoo! So basically, it's all theoretical.

Now I'm seeing a Lord of the Mood Rings Tattoo. XD

[aria]

AMPERSAND TATTOO. I kind of massively approve. Uh, I think it would look awesome on the back of a shoulder? And you have nice back-of-shoulders, but I realise it might be slightly difficult to hide when wearing warm-day shirts, so I dunno.

Noooo. Oh god the tackiness of the Lord of the Mood Rings. /o\

[geekturnedvamp]

It wouldn't be the same as intense heat, but you could get a LotR tattoo in black light ink--so it would only show up under black light (which you'd probably only be under in clubs or whatever), but that could be kind of cool.

[aria]

I have had this suggested also! I think I'd go with a visible-all-the-time tattoo, though, because if I'm going to go to the trouble of getting one I might as well see it.

[marina]

I am one of those people who pretty much knows I will never be able to pick something I can live with on my body for the rest of my life (even though Ani Difranco's "I had leave the house of self-importance/To doodle my first tattoo/To realize a tattoo is no more permanent/Than I am..." def rings true) but I say if the only question is money and/or pain you should do it. I'm sure it won't significantly damage your grad school fund (I understand a degree in the US costs a bit more than 50-100$?) and you know, people say childbirth is "just a day or two" so you know, a tattoo can't be that bad.

[aria]

Also I think I would infinitely prefer a tattoo to childbirth! Heh.

I think there is serious consideration going on here, yes.

[feverbeats]

High School Musical is so great, Aria! RYAN IS SO GAY! Alternately, RYAN IS SO DOING HIS SISTER. :D?

Dude, absolutely get a tattoo. Although I feel ya on the money thing, so idk. But maybe as a graduation present to yourself or something? And you know I'll come with you to fight off the horror of needles!

[feverbeats]

Also, it only hurts if you're a huge pansy.

[fahye]

I LOVE how those are the only two plausible explanations for Ryan's character.

PS Aria if you want the hilarity/gay/crack to increase tenfold, watch HSM2. I cannot comment on the third film.

[aria]

...Yeah, I can't think of any others!

Oh god, I am about a third of the way through HSM2 right now. WHY IS IT SO HILARIOUSLY BAD IT'S KIND OF GOOD?

[fahye]

WAIT FOR THE BASEBALL SCENE.

[aria]

I LOVE HOW THIS COMMENT ACTUALLY POPPED UP AS AN INTERRUPTION TO THE BEGINNING OF THE BASEBALL SCENE.

I MAY HAVE THIS SUDDEN AWKWARD CRUSH ON RYAN. GAY GAY RYAN.

ALSO I WANT TO SHIP ~EVERYONE~.

[fahye]

OKAY NOW YOU CAN SEE THE BEST FIC EVER

[aria]

That scene was ... maybe the gayest thing I have ever seen? And I mean in the holy god awesome, does Disney KNOW what they're DOING with their METAPHORS there?? I mean really. AHHHH <3

I GUESS I SHOULD GO READ THAT FIC

[aria]

I THINK THE ANSWER IS "BOTH". :D ... D:

I also think I can almost definitely manage it, considering how fucking often I get takeout for dinner anyway, so I should probably not use money as an excuse.

Also, c'mon, Scott, I am the hugest pansy ever, you know that.

[delight]

Ankle is one of the most painful places to get a tattoo. My source is my cousin whose entire body is tattooed and he mostly didn't think any of it hurt, but kept going on about how the ankle ones and spine ones killed. So if you have problems with needles ... er, not the ankle.

(I have about 2 million Healthcare Provider Reasons why tattoos are a terrible idea and no one should get them, but that I'm not going to go into because that is only my opinion while wearing Professional Hat.)

[aria]

Argh, argh, yes, I have heard that. I guess I could try to figure out a different place? Or give up? IDK!

[schiarire]

I second the caution that the ankle is one of the most painful places to get a tattoo, especially something as involved as what you have in mind! You should also bear in mind that, to avoid bleeding (ink bleeding, not blood bleeding, errr), there is a kind of minimum font size which may make the thing come out larger than you expected.

I'm a big fan of tattoos, though. :)

[aria]

This is good information! I will now hoard it and fret. :D?

[schiarire]

Fret...OR TELL ME MORE ABOUT IT, ee!

[luzula]

Hmmmm. I am now curious about this Young Wizards stuff. You keep mentioning it, so sooner or later I'll probably have to hunt down the books. (Like the way I bought the Cloud Atlas book which you also kept mentioning. I haven't read it yet, though, but it really looks like something I'm going to like.)

[aria]

Oh, oh, okay! The Young Wizards book are only possibly my favourite books in the universe! I don't know if they'd have quite the same impact if you don't read them when you're an awkward bookish thirteen-year-old (as the protagonist is in the first one) but essentially these books are about a bunch of smart teenagers saving the world with wizardry, which in this universe is a delicious combination of magical phenomena that has a decent grounding in physics at least some of the time, and of using words in the right way at the right time. (For instance, if you need to run from evil when it's trapped you atop a New York City skyscraper, you tell the air to remember that time when all its component pollutant minerals were in solid rock and then run away across the solidified remembrance! Or you calculate the velocities of various bodies and how much air you're going to need before you go off teleporting to the moon. &c.) And wizardry is employed, as they say, in the service of life, as a way of fighting the inevitable entropy of the universe, and ... if I was more awake I would give the premise the justice it deserves.

Just imagine that Fraser is a teenager with magical powers in the not-cheesy way and you've basically got it too, though. :D

Or, er, just take a look at the wiki page. Although, uh, I might just look at the premise blurb and then go right down to the book list, because the page is not ruin-the-books spoilery but it is spoilery.

[luzula]

Hee, there was apparently no difficulty in getting you to talk about this, anyway. : )

That sounds intriguing! I mean, a lot of the best fantasy is YA stuff, and I don't think it would be hard for me to identify with an awkward bookish 13-year-old--I mean, I've been one, too. The library doesn't appear to have them, though...but I'll put them on my to-read list, and I'll get to them some time.