her hardest hue to hold

Love styles

nightfallrising — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 20:34:32 GMT

Came across this in an article my textbook referenced and thought it was interesting--we all know about erotic vs platonic love, but here are some other styles. I feel storgic, which does not work at all when you're no longer living in a dorm... this could be a cool prompt-set. If anyone sees this and uses the ideas, I'd be interested to know about it. :)

Eros: erotic lovers search for a person with the right physical characteristics and is eager for an intense relationship

Ludos: ludic lovers are playful in love and like to play the field

Storgé: storgic lovers prefer slowly developing attachments that lead to lasting commitment.

Mania: manic lovers are demanding and possessive toward the beloved and have a feeling of being out of control

Agape: agapic lovers are altruistic, loving without concern for receiving anything in return.

Pragma: pragmatic lovers search for partners with the right vital statistics: job, age, religion, ets
--JA Lee, 1988, Love Styles

Stygium: Moist, Vetinari, hands-off machination, and mutual entrancement

nightfallrising — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:02:12 GMT

Just found this old piece of idleness on my hard drive looking for old translations of Li Bai. May as well post.

Title: Stygium
Fandom: Discworld (Making Money)
Pairings/Characters: Moist, Vetinari
Rating: none
Warnings: authorial arrogance in attempting a Vetinari POV, but brief
Summary/Notes: Come set up shop in my parlor...
I've just noticed a hint towards Unseen Academicals in here. I don't even remember when I wrote this, but it was long before I knew UA was on the horizon (ie: before I saw it in the library and went HOMG). o.O

“Incidentally,” Vetinari remarks, tone barely interested, as black velvet swallows the white-hot flare of the most dangerous trinket (for someone, anyway; a lesson to the community at large of the benefits of taking healthful exercise and not allowing age and complaisance to swell one’s fingers to the size of plantains may be, he suspects, on the horizon) in the city, “I think you were needlessly silly to hold it all that time. I’m not a monster, you know.”

No, you’re worse, flicks under perfectly bland features. Not, let it be understood, a bland expression. No, indeed. The expression is one of a moderately well-bred man (one who knows full well that he is indeed a man and has long since discarded such protestations to that effect such as permanent stubble, a cigar that could easily choke a camel with either its stench or sheer cubic capacity, and armor painstakingly maintained for the perfect balance between perfect efficiency and the maximum possible degree of untutored, unpolished (hah, yes indeed) scruff, to take an example at random--or, to turn it on its head, a voice and even expression, wrapped in crisp crimson with gold frogging, with sufficient drawl to explode a desire for fisticuffs in all those whose demographics leaves them unable to dare satisfy it, purely for the pleasure of watching them fail to dare) caught off guard in horrified surprise.

Entirely satisfactory. Oh, not merely because it shows that his point has been made. A knows that B knows that A knows that B knows that A knows, and so on; a foregone conclusion, and one, quite frankly, sufficiently underlined for his purposes ten minutes ago, under the haughty, painted eyes of the contemptible (perhaps he ought not, after all, to judge his predecessors very harshly—this being, after all, redundant. History is malleable, but lessons learnable from the facts history obscures remain for the observant scholar). Satisfactory, rather, because he’s almost as certain that the horror is honest as he is that von Lipwig (with that instant, thoughtless intuition that marks the true craftsman) is, not failing to prevent, but, rather, instinctively permitting its expression.

Satisfying, yes. What, more than satisfying, gratifies and even satiates, is what follows: the flicker, the barest shadow of a hint of a whisper, of tolerance. Tolerance, by every focal point of belief given insubstantial flesh by human worship. Resigned acceptance, in those no-colored eyes that cloak themselves as a matter of course in a just slightly overdone (or, from a practical standpoint, in fact done perfectly) attempt to not look too innocent. The faintest of wryly philosophical twists at one corner of a moderately-made mouth just beginning (and this promises mild entertainment when its owner realizes) to run to smile lines.

It’s all about the city. Sometimes, he even thinks someone else understands that. Personal isn’t the same as important. Just because someone’s a member of an ethnic minority doesn’t mean they’re not a nasty, small-minded little jerk. The truth will make ye fret. You say to people, Throw off your chains, and they make new chains for themselves. Of course, a thorough comprehension of man’s intrinsic disbelief in freedom (never believe anyone who tells you otherwise; in fact, never believe anyone who tells you anything) is only to be expected.

Sometimes, of course, of course, one must look for enlightenment in those who would disdain to be endarkened. That hearty little marching… tune, for lack of a better word, Vimes’s trainees had been galumphing around the city shouting with tormented and perspiring expressions as a happy troll chased them with a club with a nail on it, for example. How did it go? Why we sing this we don’t know; we can’t make the words rhyme properly, wasn’t it?

An affront to the very soul of a man who would, really, prefer to read even really good music than hear it played by overfed, dribbling-spitting men with sweaty, shiny faces frozen in terror under hair slicked back with odiferous oils while the conductor propels them through it in impatient flicks (or, worse, with that really appalling expression of passionate transcendence employed by those who are there to do a job of work but would like others to believe them possessed of fine, artistic souls).

An affront, one would think, and yet. And yet. And yet, something profound in the enslavement of melody and meter to rhythm, something in the helpless subservience to a higher power (which, naturally, is not in fact embodied by the club or even the nail, which are merely inanimate objects, waving around, for the purpose of).

For the city is a mechanism, a great, monstrous clockwork full of gears turning their courses over and over, choked with grease, deadened to the vibrations of even other gears not so very far away, blind to anything beyond their own metal. Ants doggedly run their paces, innocent of the great kinetic energy their weak little passes build up in the great, unthinking machine, innocent of even the implications of their lifting power. The spider understands the entangling, world-ordering power of the tensile strength it spins, the silkworm does not.

What will the chaos butterfly become, when it emerges from a spidersilk cocoon? Something intriguing, no doubt, and entertaining, and, above all, useful. He can’t wait to find out. Except, of course, that he can.

No actual content...

nightfallrising — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 06:03:26 GMT

... but thank you so much to... okay, I've forgotten how to tag, but to Esinde and Mentha for the v-gifts. ^,^ Also to T (who is highly unlikely to read this) for his email. T & M are visiting T's grandmother in Israel. It has been been impressed on me that as she's eighty this year, her birthday has seniority and oomph and he'll be disowned or something if he fails to show. I remain unconvinced, but wish her many happy returns in soundness of mind anyway. ;)

In other news, the local B&J does two-for-one sundaes on Mondays. Their rhyme, not mine.

Album of the Sang Real (Snape gen)

nightfallrising — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:28:31 GMT

Notes: Uh... ok, notes just in case anyone does happen to read this, which isn't expected given that I don't have the faintest idea how long it's been since I did any journaling outside of games... this fic happened after I watched Antwone Fisher for class. Not that it has anything to do with the film. Which I watched under protest--not because I didn't know it was good, but because I'd seen snippets while working the psych ward, and anything connected to that experience makes me cringe. Which may have something to do with the long hiatus, since I was fairly active during that period.

Anyway, I'm mostly posting because red_squared told me to and then the Sevmuse was pouting that no one, as personified by her adorable Siripuppy, cared about his mum. Which is probably true, but the writer's block actually lifted for an actual whole story, so... yeah. Only I guess that means there needs to be an actual title...

Title: Album of the Sang Real
Pairings/Characters: Eileen/Tobias, Severus
Rating: T?
Warnings: A weird but possibly not unique juxtaposition of domestic cuteness and abuse. Alcoholism. A stylized style.
Summary/Notes: This is the prince. She is no damsel.

This is the prince, licking a stripe of cookie dough off the side of her wrist. The sweet, sticky batter felt alive under her hands. She cries when her mother vanishes the bowlful of good things into pure air, and next time she climbs carefully up the stepladder at the sink first, and washes her hands until they’re red and smarting.

This is the prince. She is not a princess, because a princess has to be golden-haired and beautiful and probably useless. This is a prince, and she can skip a stone four times before it sinks, and she can make a bad dog whine and come to lick her hand just with her voice, and she can make bread and mix burn cream all by herself from the book, and soon she will have her own wand.

It will be oak and dragon heartstring, and that’s just right for a prince who wears the red and gold, just like her mother and her father and her grandfather. But she thinks blue like her aunt would have set her off better.

This is the prince, and like other princes, she will not marry a prince. The beautiful boys in her class lose to her at darts and gobstones, and sometimes they even flirt with her a little when they want her notes. She has a good time with them, even if she gets annoyed easily by how stupid they are. It’s the girls and their plucked brows and pretty hair she can’t stand, the girls who might challenge her class ranking if they put the same effort into their homework that they do into manicure spells and teasing combs.

But that’s all right: a prince doesn’t marry the court damsels, either. A prince marries ash-girls, and raises them. A prince graces the women of the earth.

It turns out that a prince had better not marry a man of the earth if she wants to keep her castle.

This is the prince, brewing a cup of tea for her neighbor. The final touch is to stir it a glamour into it: three circles deosil and twice widdershins, three times, with a rod of dried butterfly-weed and fluxweed, bound tight with the moon’s birch bark. Now that her neighbor will see and smell and taste the tea she was expecting, there will be no problem in giving her the potion that will keep her migraines at bay for another three months. People always feel better after a cup of tea with young Eileen, for all her sharp tongue.

This is the prince, making her first sale. This is her husband, shrugging as she adds her small earnings to his wages from the mill, supposing it will buy her some of those books she misses.

It won’t. Prince Charming may be a prodigal son, but a responsible prince is frugal with the resources of her home.

This is the prince writing to her mother, one hand resting gently on the top of her belly. There is no written reply, but a steady stream of very small used clothes and blankets, and jam jars of potions and small coins (knuts at first, then her mother must have realized), begin to arrive in a slow trickle. This is the wall that the prince has punched through at the first owl, being repaired before her husband gets home. This is his bemused look, which never changes, when she washes the dishes with a flick of her wand. Sometimes she thinks it looks a little disturbed, but he knew what he was getting.

This is the prince hastily signing the birth certificate while her husband is out handing 'round cigars to his mill worker friends at the pub. Her grandfather and her father both have terrible names, names that will be a curse to a child in a muggle town, but there’s pride and then there’s stupidity, and if she wants her family’s advantages for her boy, she can’t lay the flattery on lightly.

This is her husband raging when he finds out, and the baby screaming at all the fuss. The packages become less furtive, and there are stilted, formal cards at the holidays, small presents of money along with little gifts every January. They never call the boy by his full name, unless he’s due a scolding. His father and the other muggles call him Seth. She calls him Very. After all, he is: whatever he is, at any moment, it’s always very.

This is the prince carefully folding a tiny hand around a stirring rod, tracing patterns into a cup of water, bringing it gently down on an empty cutting board in rhythm, chopchopchop, swishing and flicking it in the air. This is the prince alternating bedtime stories with her husband: Cinderella and Beedle the Bard one night, Snow White and Rabbity Babbity another. This is a young boy giving an apple a very suspicious look, and these are his parents laughing. This is a young boy talking to a rabbit, and this is his father asking him if he’s a sissy—of course it couldn’t be in disguise! This is his mother explaining both why it isn’t likely, and why there is an outside chance. This is a boy who grows up knowing that ‘impossible’ doesn’t mean the same set of things thing to everyone, and neither does ‘mustn’t.’

This is a family on a walk, taking a shortcut that gets them lost. This is a father, irritably refusing a point-me spell, insisting he can find the way. This is the sun setting, and the air chilling, and a little boy’s teeth chattering too loudly for too long, and a deep voice raised in anger. This is a child shrinking away and flushing with shame and fear, and this the flush rising through his body until his mittens catch fire in his parents’ hands. This is his father yelling in pain and fear and outrage, and his mother in crowing delight.

These are picture books from his grandparents, a complete set of the Young Wizard’s First series: textbooks for the very young. This is a boy with a crayon and solemn eyes that catch the light from the window, carefully and badly copying the diagrams and incantations and pictures of plants and animals on old newspapers charmed blank. This is a boy concentrating very hard, and drawing his hand closer and closer to a hot cauldron until he can touch it without burning himself. This is his smile. This is his mother’s.

This is a fire at the mill, and this is a pink slip, and those were severance wages. Now they’re a pint of bitter or two. Or a few. Who’s counting?

This is a man who can’t provide for his family. This is a man whose wife’s weird herbal deals with the neighbor bring in money he can only get from the government. This is a boy who picks the herbs for her and watches with his mouth open and his eyes wide as she does the only work that brings in the bread and he watcher and watches her, and follows her movements with his little hands. This is a boy who turns his back on his father, who isn’t doing anything interesting, to learn his mother’s work.

This is a pub. It’s a friendly place to be. The men in it know the same things he knows, and can do what he can do. It has beer, and darts he can throw. This is a man who wants to throw something at his life, but the dartboard will do until the beer has softened his edges and he can safely go home.

This is a cheque. It was written by a very rich man who no longer lives in Nelson but hasn’t forgotten his old town. It means the mill can be rebuilt, and its workers can earn something by helping the construction workers on a daily basis. This is a pub, which is the natural place to go with your mates after a hard day’s manual labor. This is the prince, kissing her husband’s cheek with a smile, glad to see him with his pride back. This is a boy asking excitedly why Da doesn’t take Mam next time; she can probably build the mill back in five minutes with a spell. This is the prince laughing and telling him why that wouldn’t work—muggle expectations, the complexity of the project, a woman’s help not being really welcome there—not noticing her husband stiffening. This is his son, noticing.

This is a building project that goes more quickly and more smoothly than anyone had expected, and this is the serene face of a prince and the darkened brows of a man who does not tell her that he believes she thinks his hard work is an unnecessary game, and that she is humoring him. This is his son with quick black mirrors for eyes, who couldn’t find the words to explain it if asked, but does not need to be told. This is the space at his hip where a Nottingham wand-maker’s work will hang before so very long: this is its kneazle-whisker core.

(This is his grandfather’s old school scarf, delivered the day before he undertook the long journey to London for the express train that will pass his home hours into the trip. It lies gathering dust at the foot of his bed: the warm colors give life to his sallow coloring, but he knows by then that he won’t want it. Doesn’t want it. This is his mother finally turning away from the wait for the owls that won’t be coming anymore.)

This is a boy going to work with his father, as boys do sometimes. This is his interested face as all the machinery is explained to him, and these are the men grinning as he makes sketches of all these machines, which aren’t bad for his age, and puzzles over how they fit together. This is his father settling down to work, and this is a boy trying his hand at the repetitive tasks, and this is a boy getting bored. These are the men who find him later in a corner with a serious frown crinkling his heavy brows, curled up around a Latin primer their sons certainly didn’t come home from school with.

This is a boy catching hell from those sons in the schoolyard the next day for being the swot he is and showing them up in front of their fathers. This is a stringy, gawky boy getting a reputation as a wildcat fighter all at once. These are boys whose bruises look like they come from blunt instruments rather than fists, and like burn marks, and like frostbite, and (more explicably) like teeth. This is a child who is praised for holding his own in a fight (but not for biting) both by his father and by, perhaps less usually, his red-gold mother.

This is a boy frowning very hard at a pair of leaves, for the fifty-seventh time that day alone (he keeps count). This is his well-earned grin of triumph when one rimes with frost at the same time that the other is consumed by flames. This is the prince beside herself with pride, telling him never to forget what he can do on his own and in silence once he gets a wand and learns the words to make it easier for him. This is a father who is beyond freaked out, try though he does not to show it. This is a boy learning that, by his very nature, he can’t please everyone.

This is a boy preferring to help his mother in her workroom afterschool than to go be bored at the mill--one too many times. Two too many. Ten. The pub is a friendly place to be, and this is a thirsty man.

This is the prince, rescuing her beloved from the smelly, belching, earthy place. This is his embarrassment at having his lesser control (what a recurring theme) polished and shown publicly. It’s very loud; it sounds like anger.

This is a scene repeating itself.

This is a prince losing patience. This is the tongue she is well known for. These are the lips around it, bleeding for the first time. These are two pairs of shocked black eyes. These are apologies, and these are promises, and these are healing spells of magic and of the flesh.

This is a scene repeating itself.

This is a scene repeating itself.

This is a repeated scene witnessed. These are a man’s socks catching fire, and the seat of his pants. This is a boy cowering in a corner. These are veins bulging in a long, reddened face. These are black bruises on thin arms and ribs.

This is a prince who will not back down, and will not accept apologies or promises that won’t be kept. This is a red-gold prince who won’t be too stubborn to do what her parents want when it’s the right thing to do; this is a mother who will take her baby home.

These are blackened black eyes peeling open. This is the blood matting black hair. This is a room coming into focus. These are broken shards of oak and dragon heartstring, smouldering on a fire.

This is the silence where a scream should be. This is the heart of a witch.

Giftart: SH: A trifling domestic affair

nightfallrising — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 07:34:37 GMT

new_kate, there are a more problems with this than I like to see in an outgoing gift, but they're not fixing themselves as the interim between your very kind gift and this post stretches out.

If this is (and it is) rather tortured prose, please blame it on my having recently torn through katieforsythe's work and being incompetently impressionable at 2am. Hopefully the rec will compensate in some small way (if you haven't already met the lady's work) for [deleted highlighting of flaws it's possible people who aren't me would forgive].

nightfallrising — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 23:22:04 GMT

Into every girl's life comes the moment when she must decide whether to patch, toss, or mend her first pair of jeans.

...I don't have time to go shopping.

(blames KL for & resists the urge to badly embroider Hakkai-vines up the leg to hide new seam)
(is saved by aforementioned lack of time. And patience. And embroidery hoop.)
(isn't grateful)

Mixed bag

nightfallrising — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:25:54 GMT

Are we all inventing reasons for her not to have explicitly stated the orientation of the most loudly-dressed living man in the series who was willing to drop his dependents (for whom he'd dropped his career) and run off with a beautiful amoral blond now? I got one!

How 'bout, it was Harry's book, and Harry's infatuation with a beautiful amoral blond a) took a left turn at Pretty Oedipal Redhead and b) never tempted him from the Path of Shiny Armor? Now, maybe if the book had been centered around DD's other protégé, the one who it's heavily hinted was... er, not tempted from, but effectively discouraged from stepping onto Virtue Blvd by... a beautiful, amoral blond (gasp!), well, maybe then it would have been stated outright on account of being relevant to the plot.

Hey, you got your guesses, I got mine. ^_^ And while we're speculatin', you think JKR's got a thing for blonds?

In other news, I'm behind on bunnies and projects and schoolwork and everything (promised things for newkate and dannybailey coming soonish, though, I hope). Today and tomorrow are my last days to get the stuff I want to keep out of the house I've lived in almost all my life before it changes hands, and I've got a case of pressing midterms. Dad wants to watch Disk 4 of Heroes all tonight--very unusual for him--and I've got to get enough done to justify it. I also have to make my dinner pies today, so I can take them back home (THIS is my home!) and have food for the next couple weeks. What I want is for my games to stop being dead. And my GPS to behave and stop terrifying me with prospective lostness. And to keep my house. And not lose access to my library. Stupid finances. Where is my ipod?? Packing is too draining to do it without music. :(

Eta: pies are in oven and pod is found--but no speakers, and the rental place didn't have the DVD. Le sigh.
Hey, what does ETA stand for in this context? Did I really just type 'estimated time of arrival' instead of 'addendum?' o.O

I did say it was going to be late.

nightfallrising — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 19:52:59 GMT

Happy birthday, archon_mentha!

The Persuasiveness of Camouflage
(a study in distillation, observed)

Horace Slughorn knew the story of the moth. The air of his Britain was strangled with particulate matter, soot and poison and the bottoms of its people’s lungs, and owls plucked bright insects off blackened bark, out of thick, grey air. Get out into the green, his father told him. Trade the trees’ breath for yours; a man needs good air to think proper. Breathe trash, and it’s in your lungs, in your blood, filling up your brain, passing through your heart and smearing the walls till they choke.

Horace went into the green, took a clean breath, looked around with clear eyes, and found a thousand small lives, some greater, all of use.

Now he’s getting on, and his world is grey. He trades his air with, not flashing leaves, but the slow pulse of bare stone. Blue slate, the sleekened surface of grainy granite and its sparkling mica, veined marble surrounds him. Damp as life, it pulls the poison he makes out of him, out of his cauldrons, and into mossy patches, filtering back pure air, smelling of earth and rain.

Oh, the stones of Hogwarts live, and the dungeons have breath, but it’s a breath that pulls his bones, not his ears. Not like the telltale emptiness from behind his biggest, blackest, iron-belly cauldron.

“A silencing spell’s no substitute for good, honest stealth, m’boy,” he observes to no one in particular. “Not when I know where the drips ought to be.”

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Emerges from behind his rusty dragon the tip of a nose, a badly set bridge, a lock of hair lightened and weighted with dark dust, a shadowed face too sharp even for a little serpent. This year’s piece of awkwardness, landed in his nest, black cloak puddled in a shadow, faded, mismatched clothes disappearing into the walls.

He waits for an explanation. Embarrassment, defiance, a plea of ignorance for the hour, protestations of innocence, a trumped-up question or request. What he gets is a small body settling beside him at the preparations bench, glossy black eyes fixed on his hands, drilling through him, and silence.

When the rhythm of a knife joins his, his mouth opens in admonishment that’s mostly for himself, his inattention, but partly for the waste of ingredients that’ll want paying for. But the boy, in his shabby clothes, is cutting air.

Putting his hands over smaller ones, he adjusts the grip, shows him the angle, the weighty love of a sharp point for the cutting board, the light-hearted stroke back towards a narrow chest. He calls for a house elf, asks for a basket of cabbages. Conscientious strokes become, over months, a steady flash of blade, ripped leaves turn to true-sliced shreds, cauldrons shine and small arms tighten, authors mentioned in passing turn up in essays, and he sees thin hands twist crisply from time to time, when in thought, as though plucking again the leaves that stain their fingers.

«
»
(≈≈)

Horace Slughorn had heard himself compared to a sedentary spider, playing the cords of his web like a dulcimer, tapping down the lines until plump baskets in gay spellophane shiver their way back to him, sweet and rustling. Horace preferred butterflies to spiders, those blithe little catalysts, stirring the shape of distant storms. The baskets were always appreciated, but there was nothing like sliding a name into its proper place, nothing like seeing an old favor paid back a thousandfold, nothing like a visit from an old student.

Nothing like a visit from this student.

Nothing sweet, nothing promising, just hollowed cheeks, vacuum eyes, stained hands strained nearly to bare bone, the taut thrum of desperation seeping away into the pores of the dungeon. Not his clothes faded now, no, not with those benefactors, only his face grey over set bones of stark dread.

A long silence, scented steam rising from pretty cups too delicate for rawboned fingers, too small for pudgy ones. The flash of knives, the scrape of ladles and bubbles of magic breaking hot into the air, and finally scouring death sits placid, shimmering blue in the depths of its bright bronze cauldron, pages of looping shorthand beside it. It will take him months to deconstruct and rebuilt into a counteragent, he knows. Months, even with its recipe sitting beside it, as his children learn how to spin an essay and brave, foolish men and women die in agony every day.

Siphoning his poison into sampling vials, his protégé says, with crisp politeness he never came to school with, “Please resign.”

Steam curls and vials clink.

“You don’t want much, laddy, do you.”

“Doesn’t matter what I want.” Prompt. Midnight eyes, moonless, starless, spinning him away with them into the bitter, sucking void. “You will. Because I’ve come to ask.”

No more needs saying, not here in these dungeons, and so when he retires it’s unthreatened and unbroken, with the dark unnamable so pleased with his ready cooperation that he’s able to brew his counteragents in peace, and slide them home to his old friend and to the Aurors. From the grey stones under Hogwarts, as Horace’s greatest mistake curses and fumes from without and seeks the author of his thwarting, comes only silence and the occasional basket, death wrapped carefully under the pineapple, in papers that blossom with a crabbed hand by the light of a salty-wicked candle, sometimes entire days before it strikes.

«
»
(≈≈)

Horace Slughorn knows the lesson of the snake, and it grieves him to see that of all his colleagues, most new only again, only the key-keeper glistens proud in a fresh skin. He’s heard the legend of the yearly applications for a cursed post, and he expects triumph. Instead he gets resentment, and that only infrequently, when black eyes can tear themselves from a black hand. Small burdens of the House creep slowly onto his shoulders, and with them tales of unprecedentedly long Defense readings, fill-in-the-blank tests, barely structured classes, and no essays. His dungeons are never his own, a dark shadow standing always beside him, grim and silent but for the quiet sizzle of power on the boil, and the steady flash of a dancing knife.

Albus asks his patience and sets small children on him and ignores his fear. Albus reeks of unguents and herbs. Albus smells just like the workroom that ought to be his again.

They’re both substitutes, he thinks, both just covering classes, and forgets the danger of using words to speak to this boy. He’s told to mind his own business if he knows what’s good for him, and he listens, oh, he listens, and he minds. Albus mouths trust, and Albus falls.

The knife of a face his gaze stutters over, one evening in the Leaky, is ash-pale, pared down into something so raw and bleak as to be unreadable, his mind telling him ‘impassive’ in self-preservation before his eyes catch up. He looks like a day-laborer, unremarkable, one of many at his table, and Horace wonders what that young man he protects, so unfortunate in all ways, thinks of all this.

Their eyes catch, and Horace is so strongly impelled to turn him in or break his sorry neck that he leaves his shopping in the cloakroom, on the hook of the transfigured overrobes that smell of misdirections and protections. Horace takes a certain measure of pride in his suggestibility, but he resents being taken for a puppet or a dupe.

«
»
(≈≈)

Horace Slughorn is a better student of the mole than the chameleon, but he’s not the only grown serpent in the castle these days. To his great relief, the bloated creatures that used to be his children remember and regard him as no more than a smarmy, oiled-up, sugar-coated old bear of very little brain, and that part he can play to perfection.

He teaches his classes, fair and unhurried, and attends to the few children, mostly younger, who find their way to his office door with their problems, instead of to the gargoyle staircase. He turns a blind eye to the politics and the guerilla tricks, and buries himself in research instead of making invitations. The dungeons are cold without his club to warm him, but those whose exclusion would draw attention to his sympathies are the very ones he cannot bring himself to flatter. It’s another relief, a strange and unexpected relief, to find that his utilitarianism has limits. He knows who would be glad, but doesn't bother deciding whether he cares.

One day, as he pretends not to have noticed an ugly prank on one of his uglier-minded students, a darkly clipped voice from behind takes all the points he should have, and more, and an unrepentant Hufflepuff is sentenced to a night’s frolic in a dark forest with the most solicitous of guardians.

All quite usual till that point, even to what the little ‘Puff no doubt thinks is fortuitously mistaken, accidental leniency. “Let the oversized clod take the detentions,” they’d been told. “He does less skilled labour than anyone but Filch, and Filch has served this school well, and doesn’t deserve to be saddled with noisome, sullen, misbehaving brats after hours as well. He’ll tell you he’s anxious to help, but he’s getting older, and one day they may realize he doesn’t have a wand. Anyone who wishes to cover for him is free to cater to his wishes, of course.”

All quite usual, until he finds himself slammed against the walls of his own skull by black holes in a still face. “Perhaps I should have given Carrow the House and had done with it,” he’s informed in tones of frozen courtesy, “if you’re not going to look after the little brats.”

Albus fell, but Albus lived faith.

Horace issued, not invitations but summonses, and explained to his colleagues that in his opinion some of the students could use a little help in adjusting to the new tone of the school. If these meetings involved more sweets than sermons, more murtlap than menace, well, the Carrows didn’t have to know that, and they were unlikely to find out, with even his Gryffindor guests learning a thing or two about the fine old art of not getting caught.

He began to visit the gargoyle stairs himself, bringing papers to sit and grade quietly, or the peer-reviewed Monthly Stirrings to discuss over tea. Sharing, once, an extract from an essay particularly ripe for mocking, he was met with silence, and looked up to see his boy ramrod-straight in the ornate chair, face slackened in quiet sleep, looking very nearly his right age. He thought his heart would wring itself to shreds in pity and horror--sleeping, right in front of him, the very one of his own, his Slytherins, who best knew better--and began to come every evening he wasn’t meeting with current students.

«
»
(≈≈)

Horace Slughorn knows the story of the moth, and when a black tomb is laid next to the white, he brings from the bones of the castle milky blue slate to change the stone of it with. He wouldn’t wear black anymore, Horace is sure. Not now the air's clearing.

«
»
(≈≈)

for you, by nightfall, no warnings
Notes: With thanks to atdelphi. We don't know each other, but she's influential anyway.
Also with apologies to momebie--I know this isn't what we talked about, but once I started them both it was clear that that idea needed to be handled by a much better artist. If I did it was going to suck tuna water, and it's bad enough getting a present so late without it reeking of stagnant fish juice. :\
xposted (sorta) to shiny new ij because I don't know who checks what where lately. vOv
Disclaimer: These people and their setting belong to J.K.R. No money or transactions are associated with this story.

Unrelated note: for those who might care and don't know, I've picked up Xellos at the Seaside Cafe multifandom IJ game, under the journal name sunnyshadow. Please come and play with him. He's crazy. ^_^

Intersection of game and school

nightfallrising — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:53 GMT

Or: why this one class is my favorite

Reflection and Reconstruction: Beyond Narrative in the Negotiation of Therapeutic Meaning

Is the individual thus reduced to a social con artist, adopting whatever posture of identity gains the highest pay-off? Certainly, the postmodern emphasis is on flexibility of self-identification, but this does not simultaneously imply that the individual is either duplicitous or scheming. To speak of duplicity is to presume that there is 'true expression' of self that could otherwise be available... One may interpret one's actions as duplicitous or sincere, but these ascriptions are, after all, simply components of different stories. Similarly, to presume that the individual possesses private motives, and a rational calculus of self-presentation, is again to sustain the modernist view of the self-contained individual. From the postmodern vantage point, the relationship takes priority over the individual self. That is, selves are only realized as a byproduct of relatedness. It is not independent selves who come together to form a relationship, but particular forms of relationship that engender what we take to be the individual's identity. Thus, to shift in the form and content of self-narration from one relationship to another is neither deceitful or self-serving. Rather, it is to honor the various modes of relationship in which one is enmeshed. It is to take seriously the multiple and varied forms of human connectedness that make up a life.
Gergen, Ken & Kaye, John. (1992) Beyond Narrative in Negotiation of Meaning. Sage Publishing, London, p180

Three Substitutes for Commenting While Flailing

nightfallrising — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:15:40 GMT

Freakouts fall fast on each other's heels, but at least the current one only involves other people's abrasive behavior instead of existential angst that isn't even properly mine--because of a book. 9.9 And I still need a place to live... for next month. (Insert heartfelt expletive)

But during said existential freakout...

-- red_squared wrote me fantastically vile commentcrackpseudofic. It is awesome. No, no warnings. Be brave. XD

-- Hex!Hermione decided it was about time she got a face.
For the first time in living history, the Hogwarts library had failed Hermione.

-- I wrote my first fic in quite some time. It may, by this point, be a bit anticlimactic for some of you. :p Highlight obvious gaps for DH spoilers--probably unnecessary at this point, but... vOv

Five Afterlives Severus Didn't Have, And Five He Did.
a worksafe 500
by nightfall

Dying hasn't made anyone he knows less irritating, so it can't have whitewashed him, either, thank whatever. Lily etc were gearing themselves up for… something when he arrived, but catch him caring. Nodding civilly, he snatched up a loaf of French, and strode to the guarded gaze beneath the willow. Whomping Albus with it for being wicked trouble, he curled up on him for a well-deserved nap (let them stare. He's dead). Rest will someday pall--then, there'll be cool mead in clean glasses, and if Lupin won't tell where he got the book, they can always fight about it.

It takes enough mutual misery to swell Peeves to nearly twice his usual strength before Minerva will compromise with tradition, but in the end she caves; the portraitist comes. If pitching him mostly out of her office is selfishness by now, fine. The copy's too flattering, but that's an opinion he knows better than to air. It's all far from ideal, and letting go the grail of a future full of warm fires and gentle henpecking in public is hard, however expected. Still, he thinks he's felt the manor warm some since he came back home to stay. It'll do.

He puts a hat on, and slides off the stool in numb, boneless relief when it agrees to settle on "Ravenclaw!"

Two years later, he turns James Potter's Transfigurations book into chocolate. The pool on whether it'll be eaten in front of the Headmistress or in class covers his half of the Sneakoscope hairclip for Mum's Christmas present, which Jem likes to say was the worst idea he and Lily ever had. He likes to say it's not their fault Jem's a devil from Tasmania, and pretends the grey rabbit ears Jem sticks him with aren't eight shades of brilliant.

Class dismissed, he hovers, directing the chaos. Detentions clean tables and equipment, extra-credit-grubs set the homework up on his page-turning table, ready Dictaquills, clear the oversized notepad for the next class, while the almost-trustworthy students prepare the ingredients. Three messing-about-after-class detentions for Filch today; unusual for this form. A recipe alteration idea's unfurling; during rounds tonight he'll think whose hands to borrow -- after the game, once he's found out what's going on with that perpetually red-eyed second-year.

Teaching, even Heading, he'll admit if forced, is less grinding now he can't be lemon-dropped, cruciated, or spattered, and doesn't need sleep.

In the beginning he burns, or is hacked to atoms by a demon who doesn't have the imagination to be who he looks like. Jury's still out on whether that's a mercy. The man himself, when they meet, basks happily in what he calls their sauna (which brings new meaning to 'blood-heat'), and that's blistering bittersweet perfect.

As forever crawls on, though, he's below the ice more and more often, and calls it blessed relief. Arctic immobility is nothing new, and while he's learned to absolve himself his smaller sins, his treachery is unforgivable. Penance isn't enough; forgiveness wants regret.

[fin?]

Sorry shreds of nonfiction

nightfallrising — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 08:54:28 GMT

This discussion of something in Deathly Hallows would probably be more coherent and complete if I wasn't trying to get it up before the hex_files mixer on Friday while planning to spend literally all of Thursday away from the computer. I apologize for posting what's effectively a first draft.

And thanks to those of you who snuck hugs in while I was incoherently flailing (I know I still owe at least one reply...). Let me at least try to be marginally more intelligible today about that thing that bothers me. Since I RP Snape, I don't like to discuss my thoughts about him publicly, but this is Book!Snape, not game!Snape, his ambiguity's just taken such a blow that this won't make much difference, and I need to explain my take before the post-DH mixer starts.

Severus Snape and the Phantom Hind

That thing that bothers me is Snape-related, and is not the death. If Snape isn't, in fact, smug about the death, it's just because he's such an Eeyore. Or OCD enough to, as I mentioned to momebie, hate that it was death by ~~irony~~ animal mouth. No, he's not alive anymore. If you know about any postwar fics that had him living happily ever after without getting ground into bitter dust first, please send them this way; I love unrealistic tongue-in-cheek!

It's the Snape/Evans ship.

I don't buy it. Now, that's an immediate gut reaction, purely subjective opinion, no relevance to anyone but me, but I just don't. It doesn't feel right. And I don't like how it was handled, same caveats apply.

Now, I've seen Sev/Lily I liked. Not many. Didodikali's By Any Other Name springs most immediately to mind.

What they had in common: Snape acted closer to the self he is in the classroom and with the Order, as an adult, than to Wormtail.

She was in charge. There was a definite sense of "Oh, God, what's she going to [make me] do now, I can't watch… except though my fingers…" Lily is a sparkplug, and while peremptory is one of the nice words to use for the way Snape gets when he feels something needs to happen, when he didn't have an immediate agenda, he was clearly along for the ride. That made some sense. Snape is pure beta. He's got plenty of presence to keep the pack in line, he's all set for initiative to solve problems without checking back when they come up, but at bottom, he's solidly executive officer. That's Regulus Black by himself at the bottom of the lake, folks. Severus Snape went straight to the one man (as opposed to man-snake) he could neither overpower nor manipulate. Let's not forget for one second that Sev came to school as much hurting for parents as Harry, in his own way.

There was more basic honesty and respect than fawning chivalry. More snark and lowered guards than poorly-calculated attempts to impress, and softening truths she wasn't going to like meant putting a little effort into not being brutal, not saying things he believed to be untrue. This got better with time and trust, in the book, as it should, but while one doesn't expect anyone to be born savvy, there's just too much wrong with how the suspension of bigotry got handled to be believed.

That said, I do find his putting the bigotry aside for her believable. If he can shove away one set of rules and values for one set of friends… I recognize him in the ability to make unstylish clothes he probably has necessity-driven reasons to be wearing look intentional, too.

But the ship? I don't buy it. My reasons for not thinking it's true are instinctive and subjective, but there are better reasons why it might be false.

We come away thinking we know where he's coming from, but who told us? Not Snape. Not even Rowling; Pensieves are strictly third-person. It's Lily who decides that the insult was a slip of the tongue that reveals his true colors. What does he say himself? 'I never meant to call you mudblood.' She, obviously interprets that as 'I didn't mean to just now,' but I find this explanation, as several others in the chapter, unsatisfactory.

Consider this: she has also told us that Snape is already walking a thin loyalty line. He defends his Slytherin friends to her, and that was a bit odd in itself. Not that he did it, but that he was the one, not Lily, to draw the parallel between whatever Mulciber did to MacDonald and what Potter does to him.

There is little doubt in my mind, after reading both this and OotP, that he defends her to them, as well. I say this because she does not present the image of someone who gets persistently threatened or bullied, and Sev's usual crowd most assuredly knew they were friends.

Even if they're not passing his Potions book back and forth like co-conspirators, even if they don't study perfectly amiably together and even hang out, does anybody really want to give both Sirius Black and James Potter credit for not giving her a rough time about her partiality for ol' Snivellus? Or even for doing it with discretion? Even if they managed it, I highly doubt Lily would have bitten their heads off for dictating her choice in friends quietly.

So widespread knowledge of the friendship may be taken as a given. This leaves Snape with two options, given that he can't actually separate himself from his allies/dorm-mates without getting in more trouble than any Slytherin with two neurons to rub together would voluntarily opt for. And when I say options, I mean two tactics, not two strategies.

So what can a half- blood do to keep his own neck and that of his muggleborn friend safe from bigoted, entitled purebloods with nasty senses of humor, whose connections Slughorn may not want to alienate?

The default tactic, which has been described, although not in these terms, is this: When In Rome, also known as More Vulcan Than The Vulcans. Or, more specifically, cry Mudblood. Cry it loud and cry it often, and hope this will convince that he is convinced, while keeping his dorm-mates' attention on the targets he's drawing them too, and off the pretty, popular, teacher's pet mudblood who's beating them in classes and probably would be target number one without decoys. I doubt Snape would agonize long over sacrificing non-Slytherins he doesn't know personally, especially at that age; partial treatment is kind of what he's known for. Read it this way: not, "I never meant to call you mudblood, it just slipped out," but "I never meant to call you mudblood. it just couldn't be helped." I think his throwing that slur was quite intentional, and will explain why in a minute.

Of course, this isn't going to work continuously over seven years. Especially when report cards (or their equivalent) circulate. We can only speculate what he'd decide he had to do then to keep her safe. Draw attention to those blood-traitors Potter and Black, possibly, who (according to Lupin, at least) were no academic slouches either. Or perhaps, in real desperation, mention that he'd met her parents and their trueborn Muggle daughter, to whom she bears no resemblance.

I was planning another few paragraphs here, but it's omg late, so here's the outline:

Original Pensieve memory recap

Humiliation, his standard responses to it: tongue-tied fuming silence or the hysterical throwing of the closest thing to a weapon he's got to hand that's not actually lethal.

The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd. Meaning, he's surrounded in this scene by people who don't like him, or at least aren't willing to help him. Probability of word of his behavior getting back to dorm-mates: HIGH. Probable reaction of bigoted elitist Slytherin purebloods to the half-blood who acts like he wants to be one of them accepting help from a female Gryffie mudblood? Not warm and cuddly. While under scrutiny, he had to cut her down, and he had to do it in a way his friends would approve, if he wanted to stay only the Marauders' chewtoy, and by using the pejorative, he was telling her why. And maybe, just maybe, trusting her to understand. If so, he learned better.

Then there's her reaction to the insult. It made perfect sense when her wanting to help him was purely a mitzvah, a hand held out to an acquaintance in trouble. He rebuffs it nastily, she saves face nastily, all fair. But rethink it in this light: this is a Lily who knows him. She knows that wrong-side-of-the-tracks mill town he comes from, she knows about his parents, she knows that they let him go about in outgrown shorts and his father's jacket (presumably so he would grow into it) and--I'm not even sure what Rowling meant by 'smock.' Painting apron for brewing, or his mother's chemise? Either way, these are not 'my parents let me pick my own clothes' clothes. These are hand-me-downs and second-hand clothes. Money is an issue in the Snape home, and it's a good bet what he has goes to either things he needs, like textbooks and maybe hoarded ingredients, or things he needs to be seen with, like a passable outer cloak, shoes, maybe a shirt that's a real shirt. Hands up all those who think Snape seriously expected he was ever going to need to be seen with new underwear at school! …Don't all jump up at once. There's a good chance those smalls were, let's be optimistic and just say several years old, bought to grow in. And Lily knew enough about him to deduce that, and knows how far he's come, that he's able to look even half-respectable while right-side-up. 'Below the belt' applies here in more ways than two.

And how do we know he's in love with Lily, as opposed to simply loving her? From Albus 'Twinkles' 'Megacrush on Grindelwald' 'I shall now tell you exactly what will make you do what I think is best' Dumbledore. 'Nuff said. I mean, I love the manipulative old goon, but… he's a manipulative old goon. Emphasis on the old in this case, as in the case of when-do-we-tell-Harry-the-truth-about-himself. When was that, anyway? Oh yes--posthumously. Dumbledore has a distinct romantic streak, and while I use the word to indicate the classic romantic tradition of daring rescues and dramatic flourishes at least as much as in the modern sense of romance, neither excludes the other. Far from it, in fact. Quite the opposite, even.

Speaking of the romantic tradition, there's plenty of mythology and symbolism out there about stags, and the more we learn about James, the more appropriate it is for him to be one. Deer in general and does in particular, though, are understood to be shy and graceful. I'm sorry, who did we say had a doe Patronus? Not Lily Evans, surely. The patronii we see make sense. Harry's parental protector, Hermione's otter (a clever-handed, buck-toothed, sleekly-furred floating weasel with more of a natural sense of humor than she can manage on her best day coffcoffRONcoff), Luna's serenely exuberant rabbit with its Wonderland and moon associations, Seamus's absolutely perfect boar, Albus's showy-but-useful phoenix, even Tonks's ambiguous canid.

Patronii, clearly, are reflections of people. The caster, someone or some-more-than-one they love, even both at once. Does a doe suit Lily Evans? Actually, it suits Snape better. He's at least inclined to startle and be wary, which is considerably more deerlike behavior than we ever see from Lily, whose parents only left 'tiger' off her birth certificate because that Lily needed Peter Pan to rescue her.

And yet, we're told that Snape's patronus is a doe because Lily's was. So Lily's was. And if a spitfire like her has a gentle patronus like that, it's probably not a reflection of her. This is what Tonks and, even more, Hermione echo: Lily Potter's patronus has some of her in it, but is mainly the person she loves. With me so far?

Here's the catch: Snape hates James. He hates James even without Lily in the picture, and he has good reason to. When Lily's patronus becomes a doe, does anyone really think Severus Snape is the kind of generous soul who can content himself with his the happiness his lady even if it's not with him, who can consider that her husband, in guarding her happiness, also guards his? That would be a tightly guarded 'just possibly, once he'd grown up a lot' -- if it hadn't been James. Nothing about James Potter is going to make Snape happy, whether the girl Snape lost to him was a love or a beloved friend. That Snape is able to produce a corporeal patronus at all frankly staggers the imagination. That he should be able to produce, in the usual way, one that so deeply references someone he hates? Eliminate the impossible, my dear Watson. Even if he didn't know about Prongs when they were younger, he certainly did by Book 7, and it was his hind that completed the sword quest.

Here's one solution: Severus Snape is not Nymphadora Tonks. She's a straightforward little finch. Chews out her superiors over her nickname, plays with her nose when she's happy, the whole world knows when she's depressed, and her patronus changes when she falls for someone. He is a tricksy, repressed, self-contained Occlumens.

Now, we don't know much about how Occlumency works, because Harry only learns from Snape when he's tricked into it. Here's what we know: it's controlling, if not manipulating, one's own mind, and Snape is good at it. Good enough to fool Voldemort, right up to the end, and Voldemort had definite circumstantial cause to distrust him at one point, after GoF. That 'close your mind' line Harry got fed has to have been purely beginner-level stuff, because Voldemort was supposed to be a highly skilled Legilimencer, and if Snape had just been putting up a wall of mental blankness, it would have been, "Aha, you're hiding something, I shall now crucio you until you're too far gone to keep that up, you naughty boy." Now, we seem to be meant to take away that Dumbledore is an even better Legilimencer than Voldemort, Albus is, I repeat, a romantic. He wants to believe the best of people, and he wants to believe in love.

Why, you may ask, would Snape need to fool him on this issue? Well, I'll be honest, it's 4AM, and I've forgotten a lot of what I thought I'd say, and maybe I subconsciously don't want to spill quite everything I'm thinking, but if you don't feel like coming up with your own reasons, try this one on for fun. It may seem a bit frivolous until you remember how frustrating the war and all things Potter-related are for Severus, but I wouldn't put it past him, not for one moment, to toss Albus a false trail of breadcrumbs he'll dive for -- purely to shut him up.

...

nightfallrising — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 04:50:22 GMT

Ok, you who have and haven't waited to pounce.
Have obtained and read it.
Enjoyed reading.
Am sure will enjoy again.
Lots of good stuff which I'm sure I'll notice again later.
Have temporarily forgotten most of it.
Am stuck on one thing and cannot assimilate.
NO.

Reading was interrupted by a nice dinner with friends, my first viewing of Godfather II, and nearly breaking my foot in the doorway. In this state of mind, the last gives most satisfaction.

EEEEE!

nightfallrising — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 03:19:36 GMT

Lina's voice is in a movie!!! And it looks really good!

...Next time take Xel with you. Or Zel or Rezo, at least.

...♥♥♥

Odd couple of days

nightfallrising — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 18:25:43 GMT

The real estate guy found a squirrel in our closet. It was all squinched up in the corner, pretending not to be there. It got out around midnight -- I don't know why the cats didn't kill it. That is one lucky little catatonic little guy. Maybe because it's so July and Cassie doesn't get her summer shave till the 18th; she may have been too hot and drained to go a-hunting with all the fur on top of the pudge. Or maybe the freeze option of fight-or-flight isn't as unproductive as I always thought. We let him go in the park, and he was too freaked out to recognize the concept of tree. :(

Also yesterday, had to go shopping. Borrowed my brother's store card (not credit) so I could pay by cheque, and biiiiig to-do because it was so old it was invalidated. 9.9 At least they let me take my groceries home this time. And I now have proof positive that Trader Joe's *does* have frozen white meat chicken on a regular basis, it's just that I-Can-Find-Things-And-You-Can't!person has been looking in (GASP) the wrong aisle. Ha.

They sent me home from work; not enough stations to go around today. Apparently they'd been failing to contact me all weekend. vOv I'm OK with that, despite the wasted time in the humidity; a tendon in my hand is still in pain-of-movement from the canoing last weekend; an extra day of rest won't hurt it any. I stopped off at the jewelery station outside the T so the trip wouldn't be a total loss. My finger is pretty now. :D

I wonder if I'm not so much thoroughly blocked as slowly relapsing into epistolary style. In related news, I realized that all I'd still need to effectively cosplay my character is a cloak, a haircut, and, er, eight extra inches. I even have cufflinks and a snake earcuff he could pretend he didn't know what that was doing there. ^,^

My brother's going to go see OotP on Wednesday. He promises to tell me if Harry's angst and capslockery is sufficiently de-emphasized to make the movie worth rushing to see before my scheduled viewing of the 27th. Other opinions are also welcome, encouraged, and received with interest. ^,^

Edit: I received an invitation to a college friend's... pre-wedding reception. The wedding is in Hawaii, and I appreciate not being asked to go to Hawaii, but although I'm only not talking to this girl because we're both rotten correspondents, not because we fought or anything, I see absolutely no reason to interrupt my first semester to go to Wisconsin for a cocktail reception. I don't even drink, and I'd probably have to get an ugh dress or something. But yay happy old friend!

ceci.n'est.pas.une.poesie

nightfallrising — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:50:14 GMT

my.keyboard.is.slightly.fried.

if.i.have.to.replace.it.when.it's.finished.deciding.what.it.thinks.the.keys.are.supposed.to.do,
i'm.totally.getting.ergonomic.

sigh.

Yay weekend!

nightfallrising — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 23:17:34 GMT

The Zillas are back! We went canoeing (don't even try to take my paddle, T. The front of the canoe with its good view is mine.) for a couple of hours, then to the mall. We don't usually do the mall, but I needed to stay out of the house so people could come see if they want to buy it grumblesnarlgrargh. Anyway, absolutely gorgeous day, and then we met up again later for dinner and The Emperor and the Assassin. Which I had seen before, but at that time we were supposed to be concentrating on not reading the subtitles. That would impossible at this point, so this time I just sat back and found out it is an excellent movie.

And today, for the same reason grar, we went out to see the newish Pirates movie. Which, ok, yes, it was better than the second one, but I'm not sure I'd say it fixes it as some have claimed.

So that's why I haven't been playing lately; all that + work = busybusy. May try to make up for it now, especially since after all the paddling (first time in, yikes, three years?) my hand may not be in good enough shape to let me do my job tomorrow... will certainly not be breaking any records for keyboarding in the immediate future. n,n;

The hex_files timeline is now too large to fit on one post. Um. Help? Modly instructions? Congratulatory comm-wide pizza party? Yay, we're officially a monster? n,n;;;;

nightfallrising — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 02:55:42 GMT

Character shakeups in my game, ranging from BOO losses to very nice surprises to the eagerly anticipated still anticipated (but comfort with the character is more important than speed). And my RL friends I seem most often still don't seem to be back from their honeymoon. And I need to start seriously looking for an apartment. No, not happy about that even a little bit.

But this is a must-read! Thanks to immora for this link to an anthrological report Mr. Loango (sp?) read us in fourth grade:
Body Rituals among the Nacirema
I think there may have been more body-piercing in his version. ^,^

Now all I need is that faintly horrified book that British lady wrote about her tour of the Colonies in Louisa May Alcott's time and a copy of The Lady's Not For Burning with the typesetting that plays up the meter. Hey, I'd settle for a link.

...And an apartment. =.=

Not a zombie!

nightfallrising — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 21:55:36 GMT

So the Zillas, T and M1, are now officially the D--s. O.O
The ceremony was lovely and the reception was gorgeous; it was at the Copley's Grand Ballroom or something, so it *was* very grand, all gold-colored and the bridal party in creams and blue. I can re-use my dress, too.

I will. however, have to safety-pin it to my bra next time, as getting told you need to pull your dress over your bra every five minutes a) is way less classy than this particular dress b) is v. embarrassing c) gets REAL OLD REAL FAST.

But that was the worst problem. The father of the groom didn't even make an ass of himself. We were all worried about in a very real way, but all the speeches were lovely--no, I lie, some of them were dumb, insipid, or pointless and did not have the excuse of being improv like mine, because they all brought paper--but none of them were mean, which is the main thing.

On the Zillas:

So T was an oily octopus in high school, although he did already have redeeming tendancies. When I was introduced to him, along with a friend who could have changed clothes with me, he looked us over and leered, "I like my women pleasantly plump."

At a later date (not on one) I had occasion to whack him over the head with a badminton racquet. Met him by accident at a movie once (First Contact), and he got me away from my family in the unclassiest possible way, and I then spent the movie alternately leaning forward and crossing my arms over my chest. I don't know anybody else in the school who would ever have offered to carry a girl's backpack for her, though.

He and M1 worked together on one of the school newspapers as Chief Editors, and they were constantly at each other's throats. She wasn't so good at the actual computer/layout stuff, and he wasn't so good with the staff, and neither of them was so good at compromising or appreciating the other's strengths. Constantly at each other's throats.

M1's brother in law bet her a dollar that she'd marry him. She called me up that evening, kind of weirded out by it, and made me promise that if she ever even considered going out with him, I'd shoot her.

Alas, when the time came, we were all in college, them in the same one and me out of state. ^,^

They've been together for about eight years now. He's a minor hypochondriac who isn't very manly when he's feeling low and she doesn't have a lot of patience for it, and she's a sulkier than a good loser at games while he thinks doing his best to win is very important. Last winter, she brought up the idea of marriage and he panicked and kicked her out of his apartment, and things were very bad for several months.

But recently, when she was studying for her Board Exam for med school and he was toxic with depression from the truly absurd amount of trouble he was having getting a job in his field because he'd just missed the curve on his first year grades in law school, I was having a rare afternoon out with her (she wasn't especially happy with how well she was going score-wise, either; we've barely seen her all summer). She mentioned that the rabbi was asking her to come up with a reason she had for marrying T, and said she was having trouble.

She said, "If he'd asked me a few months ago I could have come up with something easily, but right now with him so down all the time, and, you know, it's the same thing over and over, and it's not like I can help him with this; what can I even say I haven't been saying all year? And I don't have any energy, with the Boards coming up, and... I'm just not really in a romantic kind of mindset; I can't come up with anything pretty or flowery like that."

So I said, "But you still want to marry him? Even though you've been going through this long patch of not having any fun and there's no romance or flowers right now, he's still the guy, right, you still want to?"

And she said, "Yeah, I really do."

So there you go. ^,^

In other news,
I smell problems coming. (frets)

And I still have to pick between schools. One's a state school, so it's about half the price, but the other may actually have a better program that'll let me practice more. (frets)

I just got an email from a 'Tobias,' subject: 'Hey, Bud.' Naturally it was spam, but I hate it when the Snapemuse screaches in my hear. Baritones should not screach. For serious. No Rickman!Screaching! XD

My extra userpics expired, and actually, I'm good with that, although I do think they should have warned me, like they did for paid account expiration. But I don't really need more than I have, and if I want to play with photoshop or add more, I'll do that with my RP journals.

Speaking of which, hex_files is recruiting again. That's a war-based multimedia Potterverse game, for those who don't know, and it can be very cool at times. We need teachers and Trio-era kids. I hope we get some, especially Neville and Ron, both for the game and personally; I think that'd help me a lot with getting more into my new character. Super-especially a specific ...character X! But while I keep hope alive, have many, many hugs instead of pressure, you-know-who-you-are-and-who-to-share-them-with-person.

I don't know whether to smack Watson for being cruelly and unkindly oblivious or beat stalker!Holmes with a handful of the wet noodles he so closely resembles. Check this comic out!

Damn, I'm blocked. I hope school will get the juices flowing again, that's happened before. Blargh. And my watch strap broke, and the pretty-but-crappy emergency replacement I got, I can take it off my hand without unbuckling it. 9.9 I like my real watch, dammit...

Musings on the most recent panic

nightfallrising — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:25:23 GMT

Shout-out to incandescens, who, while everyone in LJ exploded, calmly updated her f-list on the status of her knitting.

Dead serious. This is a person who is imperturbably classy, and while I didn't have anything to comment at the time, in retrospect, that post was something of a reality check and oasis, and I appreciated it.

I was furious about the purge, I think the timing was suspiciously close to the Alberto Gonzales fiasco and the flopped scandal which failed to detract attention from it, and I am firmly of the opinion that Michael Moore should cover it in an epilogue to Bowling for Columbine or Out Foxed (which I still need to see), but...

I had and have no plans to change journal tools, not from worry and not on principle. Which is not to say that wouldn't change if all my friends picked up shop and moved, but it would in that case be purely for convenience. My account is paid up for a good long while; even one of my RP journals is, thanks to a gift, and I've been using the thing as an archive for a long time. I lost the HTML for my site when my drive died, what, a year ago? And the thing is too big and cumbersome to reconstruct.

And, frankly, I think it would be silly to move because of this. Yes, LJ hugely overreacted and caused a lot of fear, confusion, and anger, but what I think people are giving less consideration than it deserves is that these evangelistic übertrolls are targetting bloggers. Not just LJ. If there is a mass migration, and probably even if there isn't, I would expect WFI and their future copycats to join it and start harrassing the immigration sites. Maybe these people will be satisfied with their fifteen minutes of fame, and maybe they've gotten the taste for blood. In either case, at least for the moment, damn their red rabid-watchdog eyes, I'm staying put.

The explosion of flags on everyone's cars after 9/11 hacked me off, too. I'm just idealistic enough to feel that patriotism should not be actively reactionary. That makes it vulnerable and manipulable. Maybe I'm just stubborn and lazy, but I do think a willow is more resiliant than an oak or blade of grass.

pfui

nightfallrising — Sun, 27 May 2007 22:59:15 GMT

Have been passive-aggressively disinvited from going out tonight because of being sick. Thbt, Hyphochondriac-san. That is all. You may be justified this time, and so I put up with it, but you'd have made me feel like a bad person for going even if you weren't, and so thbt.

Just as well; have to get up earlier than usual tomorrow.

Don't you feel better for knowing that? ;)

nightfallrising — Mon, 21 May 2007 16:10:24 GMT

Net life:
Posted some art and Hex Files thread links to hf_voyeurs. Lockhart, Snape, and Rodolphus Lestrange are a combination made somewhere explosive! It's not just chatting/sniping when they get together, things sometimes actually happen. (thinks this is very cool)

Real life:
I start my new summer job this afternoon (transcription work. They suggested I take it slow and just do afternoons this week to let my fingers get used to all the activity). I know to bring my own wrist-rest, but I forgot to pay attention to how they dress. One more day of Interview!Shirt and pants I bought when I was living off high-school-style cafeteria food (needs to go shopping badly). Pleeeease let me notice more than one person there in jeans today...

Niggling stuff:
Have figured out what's made me antsy for a long time about someone let's assume you don't know. This isn't really a big deal at the moment, but it turns out to be a real thing I do honestly find a bit worrying, not just a brain-spasm of mine. Good to know, I guess; good to catch up with my subconscious... Have also clipped f-list, just a little. If you care, odds are you're not affected. :)

People+Cars=GNAR!

nightfallrising — Thu, 10 May 2007 23:13:46 GMT

Very productive trip. Probably have a second (much more solid) school to go to in my own state now; she told me to expect an affirmative. Am too damn drained to care. BLOODY HIGHWAYS. GRR, Willow, toll roads will not kill me but you might want to watch out, gets-me-lost-machine. Might want to go to Salem if they let me just so I can stay home, though, because a 2 hour each way commute is out of the goddamn question.

Anybody else's GI system shut down behind the wheel? I am going to be dead when the adrenaline goes away and I remember I'm hungry.

Anyway, another interview tomorrow (can get there by public transport thank whatever) and then I might have a summer 'job' and/or exist more reliably online.

(rambles while avoiding stuff)

nightfallrising — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 01:30:27 GMT

Half my hair is gone. It was down to my belt before, and the absence hasn't been noticed. I'm noticing it--it thinks it's all special now because it stops. This wasn't what I meant to have happen, but it looks all right; I think I'll be good with it once I get over the way it doesn't keep going. Some of it needed to go, but not this much... (puzzles, mutters about crazy scissor-happy Russian hairdressers)

momebie, I am totally holding you to that post. Move and settle first, of course. But! Holding you to it! And you must post the story! It's postworthy as is. It is, in fact, a sizeable piece of sly-foxily adorable awesome for such a tiny piece of fluff, so if the revising bug doesn't bite, post it anyway. Your Majesty's Taichou commands. ;)

Um... what else... oh, yeah! For anyone who didn't know about this one, which I found off incandescens, the Golden Compass movie has cool stuff on it's site.

Meme-game time again!
or
...Not the flavors of pretty I expected...
See, our daemons are...

Me: Klitus, a wolf (click it! soooo pretty!): modest, solitary, flexible, spontaneous, and responsible. Most of this is news, but who am I to argue with a meme. ;)
Severus: Verian, an ocelot (they picked the name not me, I swear!): modest, solitary, shy, fickle, and a leader. He's kind of outraged, and isn't buying the 'an ocelot is sort of like a kneazle' mollification. So difficult. XD (no link 'cause even I'm embarrassed by this picture. Poor Sev. Not even a jaguar, just a big kitty that looks like it started shaving too young.)
Canon!Xel: Haythia, a marmoset: shy, fickle, sociable, relaxed, and responsible. At least it's a kawaii, clever little monkey that contradicts itself. o.O
Rezo: Kyana, a tiger. Not a white tiger, either; as much a redhead as a tiger oughta be. Take that, Snape. The blind guy gets the pretty kitty. Eat it. Um. I mean, sociable, responsible, modest, shy, and humble. Would you believe it? Even the meme bought this guy's hype, and he wasn't even BSing. What a playa! XDDD ...No link because they're not giving me one. -vOv-
Gloryverse!Xel: Aditi, an.... I have no idea. The image is a black and gold blur that looks a bit like a bird but won't resolve! Maybe this quiz with its possessed lever has more truth than I give it credit for... (tries again) ok, now it's Eurasta (much better name), an... another indistinguishable gold and black blur that won't resolve! I kid you not! L-Sama, your priest has done you proud...
Weiiiiiird. Fun quiz, though. If it were going to be a real meme, I'd say play the game with your own muses! ^,^

In other news, Slime Forest is an even better way to learn Japanese than it was last time I got bored with it. It's still hokey, but it's an excellent teacher and you get to whack colored blobs apart with a hoe. They deserve it. They're vicious! They throw kanji at you and everything!

Ow. And also yiiii.....

nightfallrising — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 12:36:15 GMT

Every time I go on a trip the amount of over-the-counters I tote in case of emergencies makes me look like either a druggie or a grandma. M1 is in med school. I do not have this excuse. u.u

I think I would have preferred to wait until *after* spending four+ hours alone on the road for my back to start spasming, though. Or at least until waking up this morning. Getting sleep last night after virtuously staying offline would have been nice, although probably too much to expect. This will be my first time spending any real amount of time either behind the wheel and alone on the road. I'm actually more worried about that than the interview at the end, which says something. At least even if I bomb I'll have a birthday party to go to afterwards, which should at least be distracting.

This was all very short notice, which does not make me less a shlemiel for completely forgetting an appointment in the fuss, especially with such a reclusive person. Peter, I apologize to you, too. u.u

Block+tension=>dorky avoidance.

nightfallrising — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 00:10:54 GMT

Easily writing a couple pages in defense of playing a canonically mean person as disinclined to be nice to people he has bad history with (and bracing for a wounded rebuttal) when I can't seem to even start explaining to school Y why they should take me (this isn't poor self-esteem; it's incompetence with personal essays) has had me feeling all introverted and avoidant today and leafing through a total stranger's LJ for their recs when I should have been productive and spamming my friends with run-ons.

The point of which (not that there is one) is, I found a quiz that's quirky enough to have some fun playing the Muse!Meme Game with. I haven't done that in a long time. But, you know, I'm really curious to find out who is which Sesame Street Muppet's Dark Secret. And the losers are...

Rezo (before Shabby takes over): Bert&Ernie's Love Affair. Irritatingly wholesome smugster.
Glory!Xel: Grover on ecstasy ["You're funny, you're loveable, you're entertaining, you like to call yourself "Super Grover!"]
Canon!Xellos: Elmo's past as a transvestite crackwho... um... not Cookie Monster's bulimia, then? n,n;
Snape: These questions make Snape put his head through a wall--I mean, The Count's OCD. Hello, downer. At least it wasn't Snuffy's suicide attempts.

Hm. I used to have more of these guys.
(kicks the block) I don't feel very creative recently.