let's gather feathers.

All six watchmen trolls:



annnnnnd hero-mode Walter reacts to his Trollian screw-up:



Yeah, this obsession will burn itself out eventually, I'm sure.

So, this last week was pretty godawful.

First, my parents lost another of the cats that I helped bottlefeed and hand-rear from two days old, back in 1998. Cancer, again, just like her brother. Their other brother is now the only one left. I can't say a lot about this part because I am still too devastated to process it.

( Here is her picture, because she was beautiful and deserves to be seen )

Then a freak frost came through and completely destroyed my garden weeks too early. Just an annoyance, but god damn it.

Then I lost the musical bedrock of my life, which leaves me feeling strangely like... I don't know, like without a soundtrack, the rest of my life won't be as real as the first 31 years have been. There are certain things you expect will always be there, like the moon and the smell of newsprint on transit in the morning and the way the sky looks bruised and translucent after a storm, and REM was one of those things to me. They got me through more shitty things than I can count, and they told me that everything I was feeling had been felt and survived before, and they promised me that there was nothing wrong with me for being nostalgic and sentimental and for looking for all the lost and forgotten things, traced out in grainy black and white and framed by transistor radio static. It was okay to see things differently, to resonate with strangeness. Now I don't know if it still is.

Ugh. Damn it all.

I guess I just needed to get some of this laid out, here. Hopes for a better week coming up, please? :\

Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line (or first and second line if it's completely impossible) from the first 15 (I got carried away and did 20, whatever) songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.
Step 3: Strike out the song when someone guesses both artist and track correctly.
Step 4: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!
Step 5: If you like the game, post your own.

( stuff stuff stuff )

Ganked from steals_thyme, with 'share mp3' changed back to strikeout cause i don't do the filesharing thing. I know i know, SQUARE, sorry.

Title: Fourteenth Century Girl
Fandom: Watchmen
Characters/Pairings: Holly Mason
Date Written: 2009
Summary: I accidentally a rule!63. Scenes from the life.
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Notes: For the kinkmeme. Could stand some expansion but I don't have the energy right now.

( She just had bigger dreams than playing house. )

So, for those who are interested, aceles has once again graced me with a podfic reading! :D :D :D

It's chapters 1-5 of BtB, which is basically up to and including the confrontation in Veidt's office (she does an awesome, awesome job with Adrian's voice hahaah)

Downloadable from her journal here: http://aceles.livejournal.com/94455.html

<3

Okay, so - podficcing? This is a brilliant and wonderful thing, and something I had no idea existed. It's like an audiobook, only with fanfiction instead of actual published books.

SO IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN ZOMBIES YOU MAY WANT TO LOOK AT THIS:

(This is not a cut.) - Mp3 version
(This is also not a cut.) - M4b iTunes Audiobook version, with coverart by liodain 

Because aceles has recorded an audio version of Now, as Before(itunes audiobook file compiled by cybel ) and it is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. I am floored by how good a job this is, especially given how badly my disjointed 'random aside' writing style is suited to readings. Aceles did a thoroughly fantastic job at this and I have been floating in the clouds ever since - evidenced by the fact that I only thought to share this today. Not much was getting through, yesterday. XD

So: GO. DOWNLOAD. TELL ACELES HOW BRILLIANT SHE IS.

...as loosely related to eventual zombie!porn. D: D: YES I'M GOING TO GO THERE. BLAME LIODAIN. Well no that's not fair. Blame me. It's my freaking AU.  D|

11 lines from Eliot's Waste Land, analyzed, free associated, dumped into the stream of consciousness. Thought it might be of vague interest. If not, feel free to ignore.

Transcribed from paper!journal:

---

"Then spoke the thunder                                                          400
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed."

Eliot is for once (and only once) condoning and accepting our lust and our surrender to it as conditional to existence. Sinful action at least signifies existence, and is therefore better than inaction, which signifies nothing. Reference? Earlier work, covered this already. Moving on.

Moments that hang on past themselves and give a sense of self, of a position within time; surrender to ourselves shows us who we are. I exist I exist I exist. He says 'friend'; contrast this with the anonymous encounter in the fire sermon so roundly condemned. (Ref to Jean possibly? Am I seeing slash in everything?) Is the end goal(life vs satisfaction of base desires) the important part, or is the context more significant - lust wrapped in love rather than more lust. Water a constant theme. Water is a symbol for life all throughout but water is also a common cultural symbol for love. Condoning surrender to emotion perhaps, rather than surrender to physical sensation, with the goal irrelevant.

"Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms."                                                               410

Imagery speaks very solidly - that after we have gone to dust, the existence we have cultivated in the space between ourselves evaporates, with no one ever the wiser - no one understanding our motivations, our reasons, our excuses, our follies. Why we chose to make our home amongst these strewn moments of dissonance and fear. We become bodies in empty rooms and the intangible connections between us do not linger. There is value in these connections, or the language describing their dissipation would not read like mourning.

What have we given? We give the only thing that is ours to give. We give connection, we give self, we give sin and evil and grace and surrender, we give sympathy and control and isn't that the rest of the story? Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata. Give, sympathize, control. We give when we cannot bear to take, accept when we cannot ask. Control when sympathy is not enough to quell the chorus in our heads. Sympathize when control shatters. Give of ourselves and hope that it is enough, that blood shakes the heart in relief rather than fear, that the daring is worth its risk, that the surrender is received as the fragile gift it is, handled lightly, unbroken. That we do not wish to retract it. That the giving does not diminish the greater scope of our existence. My friend. My friend. Blood shaking my heart - "My friend," he says. "Love," he does not say, as friends never do, as no one who really should ever does, because there are too many kinds and only one word and language cows the spirit every time. My friend.

Eventually all the rooms will be empty, all surrenders forgotten with the reasons and the excuses and the guilt - all friends dead and gone. Will it have been worth it? And would an age of prudence have been worth it? At death's door, would any of us ask for the memory of a pure life and in the bargain, trade away a hand, a breath, a voice in the darkness, tears to fall on a numb cheek, arms to die in? These connections hum in our hearts and if the giving is base and vulgar, it is still better than giving nothing at all.

My friend.

---

Yeah, so. THIS IS THE KIND OF SHIT I THINK ABOUT WHILE PLANNING FICS. Brought to you by Bic and Moleskine, and by the letter C. For CRAAAAAZY.