a conspiracy of cartographers

Woke up to a tweet from Polaris that said Look, I found the perfect Valentine for you and linked me to a tumblr post with the following text:

blood is red
love is redder
ur morally accepted ship is good
but incest is better

Guys, my BFF is a lovely human who mocks my ridiculousnesses in the best possible way. Happy February 14th, I guess! The housemates and I are breaking out chocolate cake this evening and hopefully just hanging out for a bit, and that is in fact exactly the way I want to spend Valentine's Day, because unsurprisingly, proscriptive heterosexual narratives are not my jam, and I love my friends, and also I love cake! (I did buy a nice card that is not explicitly couple-y, and I'm going to give it to my sweeties tomorrow, but, y'know, in the spirit of Lupercalia, as you do.)

Also, hell, this meme is going around, and it looks like fun: Let's play this game where you guess my favourite tropes and fictional character types.

I ... doubt much guessing will be involved. But you get no points for incest, Polaris already lampshaded that one.

Wow, so I just had the sort of hilarious detailed dream I often have just before waking up. In it ... well, first there was a bit about seals in a swimming pool, but I don't remember that part very well. What I do remember is dreaming that I'd been sent a link alerting me that someone had reposted Shatter without asking me. Said someone had an LJ that screams "teenage girl new to the internet" complete with tiiiny font sizes in varying colors. I shrugged and figured I'd just ask them to, y'know, provide a link instead of having the whole fic copied, and then I realized that they were in fact pretending it was theirs. This has never happened! I was not entirely sure what to do! I did discover that in their header notes their thank-you was to Cassandra Claire, she taught me everything I know about writing ;) which amused me greatly. What a comedian, subconscious. It turned out that the fic also wasn't a straight-up copy-paste of Shatter; it was full of bizarre, accidentally awesome kennings, and there was one bit where the writing was formatted not in paragraphs but in a weird fractured way that had clearly taken a lot of html. As I drifted out of sleep I urgently wanted to let the plagiarizing teenage girl know that she could straight-up claim it was a remix and I'd be cool with that.

Anyway, the moral of this story is: next time, bizarre awesome kennings.

Last night, after Polaris' and my second Avengers viewing, we held a small impromptu fanpeople party that over the course of the evening whittled itself down to me, Polaris, paper_tzipporah, and an impressive amount of wine. ( And then we had an absurd discussion about the characters from Community hanging out with the characters from Avengers; afaik there are no specific Avengers spoilers under the cut, but I have one anyway to be on the safe side. Click if you want to hear about ridiculous Avengers/Community crossovers! )

Anyway I still find this entertaining in the sober light of day, and so! That was an excerpt of my delightful evening.

Re: this tumblr thread on how Valentine's Day was originally "a pagan festival involving werewolves, blood, and fucking" and how this means it is probably well celebrated by watching Bram Stoker's Dracula:

aria: oh man though Gary Oldman's Dracula face
filiabelialis: YES
aria: ...I know people have apparently written the Sherlock werewolf AUs but has anyone ever written the awful vampire AU?
filiabelialis: I feel like I've seen that somewhere
aria: quite possibly!
aria: IN WHICH GARY OLDMAN TURNS BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH INTO A VAMPIRE okay what am I even going on about
filiabelialis: UNF
filiabelialis: I mean, no, that is an intriguing interpretation
aria: sadly this is not the plot of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
aria: would proooobably be lots hotter than Cold War spies, just sayin'

HAPPY 14TH OF FEBRUARY YOU GUYS <3

To my complete bewilderment, instead of writing my Yuletide (which I am so far unstressed about; I have my whole outline and I'm nearly done with the obligatory canon review) I am instead writing Marauders poly fic. Peter is not invited to these poly shenanigans, but maybe he should be, because let me tell you guys, Remus is so obstinate and self-effacing at inconvenient times that we've now passed 10,000 words and there has been one kiss. One. Remus Lupin, we have passed the minimum requirement for undemanding big bangs! This is absurd!

I swear, you guys, I am no longer even remotely upset with Tonks for calling Remus out in the hospital wing in front of everyone. I am nearly at the same point myself.

All this Supernatural-watching is making me desperately want to reread the Demon's Lexicon books: like SPN, but in England, with fewer dudebros and dead women! Also, I am entertaining myself by imagining that on the weekends Alan Ryves, Dean Winchester, and Thor get together to commiserate about the towns their little brothers razed this week and to swap coping tips. Yep.

It was probably a terrible plan to watch Mystery Spot just before going to sleep. My dreams have been thankfully light on the creepy corpsey things (though there was a brief disturbing turn with rescuing a baby Voldemort during an exciting chase through the canals of Venice) but most of last night's dreams just repeated. themselves. over. and. over. VERY FUNNY, TRICKSTER GODS. (This is what I get for writing so much about Loki.) It also may have been a terrible plan to watch Mystery Spot generally, because I was already sold on Dean's codependence re: Sam, but I hadn't been sold on Sam's codependence re: Dean, and now I am just a wobbly mess of FEELINGS. My Supernatural-watching plans did not actually include this much faceclutching and emotional investment.

I like that season three has ACTUAL COLORS, though. And that Hollywood Babylon had meta on how horror films are supposed to be dark, you guys. But I'm with the studio exec that wanted jewel tones and saturation.

And now I will go interact with actual humans, who will expect discourse on subjects other than the ridic show I'm mainlining.

I am starting to see (mostly on my tumblr dash) people getting Sorted, and getting assigned wands, and other such Pottermore shenanigans. I am a reasonable adult and I can patiently wait for my proper welcome email, but -- it comes to me that for whatever unfathomable reason I have been convinced since I was eleven that my wand is definitely rowan and phoenix feather, and that I can be Sorted however but I would be the most bewildered Hufflepuff. I am actually wicked excited for Sorting, because I have never been satisfactorily either a Gryffindor or a Ravenclaw, and I've occasionally had proposed to me that I am the cheerfullest Slytherin. But I am weirdly stressed about my wand!

This is all fairly amusing, but my inner child is apparently still waiting, slightly terrified, for her Hogwarts letter. My identityyyyyyy.

+ The response I've already got to the Loki fic is making me clutch my face with glee. It is magical to be in an active fandom. (It is also magical to know there are lots of people who share my Loki FEELINGS.) Now I just have to convince myself that not everything needs a plot, and that it is okay if I write Sif/Darcy without apology. I also have to convince myself that I am capable of writing Tony Stark, but this may, in fact, be a lie.

+ Speaking of Starks, I have the first episode of Game of Thrones sitting on my computer. Taunting me. Daring me to watch it, even though I have an inner voice wailing that I shouldn't dare watch it without reading the books first. Shut up, little voice, you coped with True Blood, you can cope with this. (Oh HBO, why you gotta keep half-seducing me into watching bits of your shows.)

+ I cannot stop listening to the gay mutant disco love song from the First Class credits. It has become the soundtrack in my mind. I am having such a strange relationship with First Class fandom! Like, on the one hand Erik/Charles is my pairing type FOREVER, and I am so, so glad that it has suddenly become fandom's thing du jour. On the other hand, the more I think about the film the more issues I have with a bunch of its basic structures and assumptions, and navigating unknown fic is a minefield of avoiding Holocaust-related hurt/comfort or the assumption that Charles is actually a good and correct person, oh god how many times have I hit the back button. On the mutant (haha) third hand, a lot of excellent writers and people I know are doing so, so right by it, and so I keep reading fic, and feeling mildly bewildered, and listening to the gay mutant disco love song yet again.

+ I went to see Midnight in Paris yesterday. It is unutterably charming, you guys. I have a low tolerance for Woody Allen films, but this one was great. I originally went to see it on the promise of Tom Hiddleston as F. Scott Fitzgerald, and he was indeed pretty delightful (although oh god he had an American accent, cognitive dissonance, WHAT IS HAPPENING) but the best part was actually Ernest Hemingway, who had me basically rolling in my seat laughing. If you like jokes about 1920s writers, watch the hell out of this.

+ I seem to be rereading American Gods; this is great fun, because I get to clutch my face and cackle when it talks about Shadow's cellmate Low Key and his scarred smile, and also I keep going, "Oh, ODIN," when no one is in the room. But I think I should warn you all: don't read Neil Gaiman late at night. Just don't do it. I used to know this, but last night I foolishly forgot, and for my transgression I dreamed that I was Shadow and had to talk with Laura while she was a half-decayed corpse; I was pretty chill about this, but there was SCREAMING INSIDE, believe me. Why you gotta do this, brain? I would have taken Aziraphale and Crowley over this. I would've taken Loki over this! Oh well. In conclusion, Neil Gaiman, late nights, no. I imagine this applies even harder if the reading in question is Sandman.

+ ...I am really tempted to watch a trio of Xena episodes in which, wiki tells me, Xena is Odin's most feared Valkyrie, Gabrielle hangs out with Brunhilda, Xena helps Beowulf defeat Grendel and ends up married to Hrothgar, and then there is girlkissing. On the other hand, if I try to watch it I might actually start laughing too hard to see.

Today in awesome things I have done with my life: get drunk, watch Iron Man. The irony is palpable, guys. (Also, oh man, trying to type 'palpable' whilst drunk? DIFFICULT.)

...I think I sold my soul to the Marvelverse while I wasn't paying attention.

(I am not actually put out; I am Getting Things Done & mainlining Castle in between, and it is in fact impossible to be disgruntled whilst mainlining Castle.)

Dear Thor fandom,

Loki is not delicate and weepy. Seriously, please stop that. I know he spends most of the film with tears in his eyes and I know that he has a slight build compared to Thor, but this is no excuse. Loki is a calculating manipulative bastard who feels everything and doesn't function well in a culture where "JUST HIT THINGS" is the solution, and that is much, much more interesting than one-note woobiness. Make a note of this, and go rewatch the movie or read some comics or some myths or -- fuck it, DWJ's Eight Days of Luke, I don't care. Just fix this.

Carry on with the Thor/Loki, though, that's pretty awesome.

Sincerely,
Aria

PS -- it's "Warriors Three" not "Warrior's Three," DESTROY YOUR APOSTROPHIES. They are not three people who belong to a warrior, they are three awesome warriors + Sif, who is too cool for this shit anyway. Thank you.