Title: All Helps and Advantages of War (AO3)
Authors: byzantienne and artillie
Fandom: Homestuck
Characters: Rose Lalonde, Eridan Ampora, Feferi Peixes, Dave Strider, Terezi Pyrope
Rating: M
Words: 10k, this part
Contains: revolution, horrorterrors, sloppy angry public hatemakeouts, Dave/Rose/Terezi, gratuitous politics, Commandant Feferi Peixes, and the worst half-cape in the known universe.
Notes: Pretty much all of this is urban_anchorite's fault, I swear, yeah. Yeah. She and gileonnen and gatty beta'd this for us!

Summary: The clutch of trolls subsides into an awkward silence, glancing back and forth between them. Eridan takes a step toward her, his hands half-raised from his side as if he’s prepared for violence, with the whole room watching.

Rose gives it to him first.

On the eve of Her Imperious Condescension's visit to the Ninth Hivefleet, Eridan Ampora tries to balance his career in the Alternian High Command and his loyalties to Feferi Peixes, while Rose Lalonde is drawn into a revolution -- and into reprising her role as emissary to the horrorterrors.

(Takes a left turn at end of Act Five, lands splat in the middle of a space opera.)


( Truly, Rose thinks, neither the slippery piles of alien canapes on skewers, nor the grating tones of the Alternian equivalent of a military brass quintet are the most egregious examples of poor taste in this ballroom. )

 

Oh, yes, I have an LJ. There's probably a big gay post to be made about how awesome hs_olympics was and all the cool people I met and LOOK AT THE COOL THING MY TEAM WROTE for the collab round, which was an insane two weeks, and I need to re-use those aliens and the technology and their civilization somewhere. ...but I'll let this paragraph suffice.


And here's a meme from velcromouse. (Hoo hoo hoo the kids are growing up, look at Clark, all 17.)

1. Reply to this post with "hey, jerk", and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

( Four dull explanations, and one potentially entertaining oneCollapse )
 

Title: The MacGuffin File
Author/Artists Writing by me; art by odie and cephiedvariable
Fandom: Homestuck
Words: ~3000.
Rating: PG-13, for a little bit of violence
Summary: They say it's a lost Dostoyevsky manuscript; otherwise it's an unpublished Tchaikovsky sonata or Rachmaninov's fourth symphony. They say a lot of things, but for Agent Dave Strider of the CIA, the file means one thing: trouble.

Notes: For Round Three of the HSO! It placed... somewhere between seventh and ninth place, I don't know, there were a lot of ties. (I could whinge for days about not having had 1500 more words to tell this in; Jenn and Odie are champs; gatty was my gracious beta.)

( > IT'S NOT LIKE THIS IS GOING TO END WITH YOU HANDCUFFED TO A CHAIR OR ANYTHINGCollapse )

I come bearing Homestuck fic!

Title: While we're here (might as well) (AO3)
Authors: byzantienne and artillie
Fandom: Homestuck
Words: ~3000
Pairing: Dave/Terezi
Rating: NC-17 for porn and porn and bloodplay, but mostly the porn.
Summary: Bodyswap. With inevitable followthrough. This is actually not the strangest thing that has ever happened to Dave Strider.

Written for the first round of the hs_olympics, with ffffabulous illustrations by odie.

( ...and someday he is going to reflect on this moment and realize that he is willingly slobbering all over his own junk and under most circumstances this would be not only gay but also distressingly narcissistic. That time is not now. Future Dave can suck it. Future Dave can contemplate Past Dave sucking it. )

Sign-ups are now open for the first ever Homestuck Shipping Olympics!

The HSO is an event that brings fans together to create awesome stuff and hang out. You can participate by signing up with a livejournal account here and choosing which ship to support! Please only sign up if you can be polite and respectful about other ships; we want this to be a really fun experience for everybody. Sign-ups will be open from now until August 1.


Me and odie (and maybe byzantienne) are on Team Dave♥Terezi and I guess there's--next to no one on my flist into Homestuck, but I feel the need to announce it. Oh gosh what am I even doing. I almost signed up for Mindfang♠Redglare, but I wanted to be on a team with someone I knew.


I've been dissolute and unemployed this summer, and it's really hot and I can't stand it; and I'd like it to be September sooner rather than later. Mostly for my cash-flow, but, fortunately, the only real money-sinks of the season are 1. my ticket for totaling my grandmother's car and knocking down a streetlight and 2. getting coffee with gileonnen.

 

I can't join in the disappointment.



EUROVISIONNNNNNNN.

in before all the Europeans say to me "But Sam that's how it works."



I'll just leave that there.

 
( In between run-throughs of yet another stupid five-minute speech for business communications tomorrow, to get my head on straight, because I've been uneasy for the past few days; oh god what am I even going to WEAR tomorrowCollapse )

 

Excerpts from Thunder at Twilight, for pentatonikk's benefit, before I forget.

The solemn, perpetual ball that was the Imperial court encompassed the whole town. London was other things besides the King's residence. Even in Bourbon days, Paris had been much more than a royal encampment. But Vienna meant Habsburg. Habsburg meant Vienna. Vienna and Habsburg kept inventing each other into a crowned, turreted, sunset-hued fable that floated above ordinary earth. Compared to other urban centers in Europe, Vienna had little commerce, less industry, and hardly any of th e workable grayness of common sense. Fact-ridden pursuits could not leave much of an imprint on a city with busy with the embroidery of Christendom's foremost escutcheon. Factory and counting house were dwarfed by the magnificent shadow of the Palace. Century after century of Viennese devoted themselves to the housing and feeding and staging of their suzerains' legend. (15-16)

And then there's a bit about how although the Habsburgs were known as the House of Austria and Franz Joseph was the Emperor of Austria, "Austria" didn't exist on paper except as "the lands and provinces represented in the Imperial council;" a "grandiose ghost whose radiance must not be bounded by definition."

( And the bit about parliament, first paragraph break mine to spare my eyes in the futureCollapse )

 

- Went to lay down for a few minutes at 11PM last night; woke up at... 2:45. Read some (I'm fffinally reading The City and the City by China Miéville and it's good), made a token effort at sleeping, gave up, read some more, started doing my laundry.

- 21st birthday passed without incident or particular drunkenness. I mean, any more drunkenness than usual. And no really interesting swag, though Rachel sent me Atomik Aztex and Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913-1914, the latter of which promises to be massively entertaining.

- Macroeconomics fills me with despair for the human condition. The class, that is, not the subject.

- I'm hungry.

- The subject line says halfway-through-law-homework-ugh, but Business Law is the best class this semester? That, and American history. I suspect that the American history guy fails a few people every semester for not participating, as object lessons, so when they come back to take his class he recognizes them and makes them say why they failed, and thus get enthusiastic participation from everyone smart enough to realize he's not fucking around.

- Writing: porn of someone else's dickbag emperor, still that Hungary/Sisi fic, kill me, gigantic genderbend fic that I could finish if I sat down and made myself, which is what I always say but can never quite do. Thank god for having people to shanghai into word-warring with me. /ducts Also, maybemaybemaybe Homestuck fic maybe, I just like Rose a lot, okay.

- There are four boxes of oatmeal sitting on top of the dresser in my dorm room. My mother is a troll. A troll with coupons.

- That's about it.

- Yep.

- Time for some caffeine.

 

Two times, a certain laurasaurus rex mentioned Prussia/Lithuania on Tumblr, and I got pinged hard enough (for whatever reason) to write her tiny bitty drabbles on the spot. These are those drabbles. 142/248 words.


( 1. Two duchies walk into a bar. Only not. Medieval Lithuania and Prussia--hey, a hundred years from now they could all be Orthodox. I guess I should warn for talk of fapping, too.Collapse )

( 2. She talked about the idea of Lithuania/fem!Prussia the second time around; therefore, Lithuania is really passive-aggressive and also communism.Collapse )

 

It's a completely gorgeous Saturday! We were promised a freak snowstorm, that snowstorm failed to materialize, it's a great day to go for a walk, and guess where I am? At work. In the library. Like I do on alternating Saturdays. And it's a little chilly in here.

I'd say interesting things about my life right now but there isn't anything going on -- I'm turning 21 on Monday. (I work until midnight at the library on Mondays; getting snockered is mostly out of the question [and it's a Monday, do I seem like an alcoholic to you, Rachel and Eddi are exempt from answering that question]; I may spike my thermos of tea in the spirit of things.) I've been watching a lot of good TV and movies and reading good books, though not as many or as quickly as I feel like I should be.

And speaking of books, my copy of Unmaking the West came in today through ILL. It's relevant to the Thing That Me and Rachel are Working On, on and off. (We saved the Byzantine Empire! For another three hundred years at least! And we saved the Aztecs, too, and civilized most of the New World to boot! ...now what.)

( An excerpt, for Rachel's benefit, because the book is like twenty-five friggin' dollars. IN A WORLD where China is king--Collapse )

And while I'm at it, Sophy's Iranophilia is infectious -- all you have to do to get me interested in something is to obsess about it in my general direction, though -- and so I'm 3/4 of the way through The Conference of the Birds. Here's a notably gruesome bit, in a book that's not really gruesome. Like, at all. I was like whoa.

( Mostly for my benefit. And for certain people who like to make up fake religions.Collapse )

 
So apparently I'm into Young Justice now?! I mainlined on the whole damn thing today, with my twitterfeed's encouragement. And now there is small fic, because Aqualad is my forever and ever girl. (SINCE WHEN DO I PING ON DUDES.) but omg look at this cutie patootie, I love M'gann so much


Title: Acid test
Fandom: Young Justice (TV)
Characters: M'gann and Kaldur
Rating: G for gen.
Summary: Kaldur only wants clarification.

Right after episode three (the one where M'gann makes the lads almost crap their spandex after she squishes the robot guy with a rock and my love for her is assured forever and ever). Less than 500 words. Call it a reaction shot or something.


( THERE ARE NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS ON DRY LAND.Collapse )
 

 

God, is anyone else even watching this show? Because it's either think about this or think about management accounting and/or and/or the writing I should be doing and/or torts and/or my piece-of-shit macroeconomics midterm and/or my history midterm that fuck you Dr. Rivera I'm gonna ace that motherfucker, come at me bro.

( Mostly bad, some good.Collapse )

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to download this week's episode of Fringe and roll in the quality science-fiction. (Ugh, bitty Peter and bitty Olivia, you are going to break my fucking heart.)

 

 

It was wet-cold all yesterday evening, so I should've seen it coming, but suddenly snow, snow everywhere.

I have no classes at all today~ And just a 7-11 shift at the deli. And my mother just texted me to tell me that I got a fat tax return, which is mostly going toward summer courses, as soon as I figure out what exactly I need to take.

And rather than kill myself trying to apply for the LOC Junior Fellows internship in a week, I'll just wait until next year. Ten bucks says I'm graduating at least a semester late, anyway. SUMMER COURSES, COME SOONER.

 

 
I don't know what to put here anymore! I don't really Do Things; I work a lot and do homework, and my major is dull, and only a stepping-stone before library school. So have some fragmentary updates about my Life. (This ran very long.)

( Secrecy and writing and Indian mathematicians, and if that ain't a hell of an elevator pitch for this post, I'll... do something. Something that draws attention to myself.Collapse )
 

 
Let me tell you about macroeconomics this semester with an imperfect, drawn-out, painful metaphor.

So you're taking a carpentry class. You want to learn how make your own shelves! This is a noble goal. It'll certainly save you money in the long run. But when the teacher shows up, he comes with only a hammer in his hand, and no other materials. He talks for a few minutes about the making of shelves, but once that's over he starts telling you about the history of hammers! And this is okay, this is interesting, you can go with this, but then you realize that he's only going to talk about about the history of the hammer. Which is not what you came here to learn. Then he starts talking about all the different kinds of hammers, and claw vs. ball pein vs. cross pein--

Finally, he has everyone take up their very own hammer and put nail after nail into a piece of wood, until they can do it perfectly.

That would be fine--fundamentals and all that--only he does it while holding the wrong end of the hammer. You know it's the wrong end. But he insists that you do it, too. So you go along with it, and burn with resentment.

That's what macroeconomics feels like.

Incompetent toddler-teachers.
 

 
This is one of those weeks where I wish there were four of me: one to get a degree in Something Useful, one to be gainfully employed, and two more to get into small suburban artsy-fartsy liberal arts colleges and study Awesome Things.

I started the semester with a roommate, found her insufferable, gave her the cold shoulder, the frozen shoulder, for a week solid, and when I stumbled in from work at three in the morning last night, I found her gone.

I'm on my second week of my three-week-straight run of weekends at the library, and then I have three glorious weeks off. With one of them, I'm going to the Bronx with Old Roommate! Only I don't remember which. Her (jerk) brother's coming home from Afghanistan, which occasions a party, which I'm invited to.

The couple of weeks of school have passed in a ~blur of work. I dropped the admissions office thing, and my mood improved pretty much right away, but I've still got a lot going on. Which is a good thing.
 

(This is the sort of thing I would freak out about on Twitter, except this is a little tl;dr for 140 characters at a go, and I really need to get it out of my system--and I don't even know whether I'll end up posting it--)

( I will feel better having put it into to words, at least.Collapse )

And that's only really the start of it. In short: I work like an alcoholic drinks. I am the fucking Haymitch Abernathy of overwork. If you haven't read The Hunger Games--that's not a flattering comparison. But it's an accurate one, only I'd like to think that I'm less smelly and unshaven.

 
I've resigned myself to an entire semester of being exhausted, if this weekend is anything to judge by.


INTERESTING TEACHERS:

• American History looks like he broke peoples' kneecaps with tire irons for a living, and then decided he wanted to live a little more dangerously and went into academia. (I think it's the gigantic silver watch and very tiny head and the fact that he dresses like a Serbian mobster.) But he passes my decent teacher litmus test, which is, "When the teacher stops talking, do the students stay quiet?"
• World Civ is very opinionated, very competent, very strange, and would rather be at the University of Chicago. Or some other Institution of Quality. According to the librarian who's willing to gossip about faculty, he's never tried to leave.
• Business Law wants substance, class, substance, give me substance, your answers have to have substance, it can't just be one sentence, give me substance, class. I like her a lot, though.

And I've got another Incompetent Toddler this semester, this time for macroeconomics, and I like economics. I had a really good teacher for micro. I'm going to be so bitter and angry by May, thank god for venting on Twitter because the teacher doesn't have the stones to tell me to get off my phone, etc; and thank god I'm that very special kind of bitter that drives me to work really hard on my own.


The New Roommate is an odd duck, but in a mostly benign way.

New Fringe is making me happier than it should. Yes, Peter and Olivia, be broken some more, you cannot ever make that window whole again once you've thrown the baseball through it, and oh, what a baseball.

 

My GPA last semester was a 3.72, thanks to some Christmas miracle, or me rallying and kicking the last test right in the sack, which gave me a B in Statistics instead of the D I expected. My schedule looks like this next semester.

On top of this, 17.5-30 hours of work, exact figure dependent on whether the library has money to pay me to work during the week or whether I'm relegated to weekend duty. Money is money. I'm back at the late-night deli. I'm baking bread and cookies and slicing meat from Thursday night to Saturday night. I can only hope the utility guy I hate (shut up I don't want to talk to you, don't spray water near my baking rack I just took those out, yes I know they're not done, this is a convection oven, I'm rotating the goddamn rolls so they bake even, yes I know how to use the slicer, I don't need tips, my hands are not too close to the blade, I am not obligated to smile at you because we happen to be in the same kitchen, you creep) is--elsewhere.

( And the rest of it.Collapse )