aristotle and socrates

your regularly scheduled once a year post

romasquerade — Sun, 05 May 2013 22:34:17 GMT

HELLO LJ. I return to share with you some good news, and that is that I have spent the past few days in Ireland with my one and only, mockturtletale, even though we are not longer friends on her declaration. We're watching hockey and eating pancakes and talking about boybands, AKA everything we always do except in person and it's glorious and perfect except that the Blackhawks lost tonight. She died my hair bright blue and I'm stoked on it.

I recall having something to say when I started this journal, but I can no longer remember. ATM she's terrorizing me by showing me pictures of Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane so I think the point is that WE ARE NO LONGER FRIENDS AND WE NEVER WILL BE AGAIN. #NOTALAD

ask your advice on a weekday

romasquerade — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 18:24:18 GMT

Hello all! I suppose it's time for an update, seeing as... I don't actually remember the last time I posted. I think it was sometime in late August? Well, it is now October, and I'm sure you are all just dying to know what's going on in my life.

The short version of RL events: I started up classes again, I stopped and started work again, I went to a taping of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! on Wednesday, and that's really it.

Ummm so I moved back into the dorms about two and a half weeks ago, even though I only just started classes on Monday. For the first week and a half I did a lot of baking, probably made 1500 baked goods, umm... and in the past week I've really just had classes! I'm taking four classes this quarter, and I'm really excited about most of them!

The first is Bio, just sort of general biology that I'm sure I learned as a freshman in high school but quickly and passionately forgot because I really hate biology. I am not excited about this class, but it'll be easy, and it's a requirement, so.

I am also taking an English course called Antihero and the Novel, which I am STOKED on, not only because the reading list is one that I'm really, really looking forward to (we're reading Emma, Light In August, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Notes From The Underground, and a couple of others that I've been meaning to read for a while), but also because the topic of the antihero is my FAVE in English lit. It's just super interesting I think and I took a class in high school and I'm quite excited to take another now, and the professor seems okay!

My third class is Intro to Ethics, which I'm still sort of getting a feel for, but which I think will be good! There are a lot of kids in the class that I know or have had classes with before, and the professor is....a tad strange, to say the least, but I think she's okay, and our discussion group was very interesting yesterday! We're reading Kant right now, if you're interested.

And finally I am taking Beginning Fiction Writing! I have in fact been writing fiction for like.... 9 or 10 years, but I didn't feel like compiling a portfolio and dealing with trying to get into an intermediate or advanced class, so I opted for the beginners class because I've never actually taken one and it could be really interesting! So far the professor is great and I'm liking my classmates, but it only meets once a week, on Wednesdays, from 3 to 6, so we'll see.

Work is the same as always, boring. I'm doing another transcript wherein two professors are discussing Medicaid in Illinois and while I feel infinitely more informed on the subject than I was a week ago, it is boring and I don't understand most of the terms they use. Social work, or public anything really work, is not my calling, but four for those who do it and/or like it!

Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me! was FANTASTIC. The highlight of October thus far (although October will be HOPPING -- I think I'm going to go see Empires on the 14th if I can procure the funds ((they are playing the House of Blues, y'all!! I mean, they aren't headlining, and they've been the supporting act there before, but. I'm just so proud of them ;_________; That said, tickets are $35 as opposed to the $12 I paid the last few times I saw them, and ain't no one got funds for that)), and I'm seeing The xx in a couple of weeks and The Hush Sound a week after that, so it's not like October will be slow). BACK ON TOPIC NOW, it was fantastic. Paula Poundstone was a panelist, and she is my FAVORITE, along with Maz whose last name I can't spell, and Amy Dickenson, and Ben Folds was on to play Not My Job, and it was all just AMAZING. They were hilarious, Peter Sagal and Carl Kasell are my favorites, and generally everything was fantastic. If I'd had the money for it, I would have bought a pillow that you can buy shaped like Carl Kasell's face that also has his face printed on it, that you can have him sign. As it was, I just got a free mug because I ended up going to a special taping. If you're a fan of the show, definitely tune in this weekend, because it was quite entertaining! If you've never listened to the show, do so this weekend, because it's great. My friend that I went with and I definitely geeked out about the NPR stuff and took pictures with everyone and it was delightful.

I think that's it? My life is utterly boring. There are first years around the campus and they're very funny and.... yeah that's it.

The short version of fandom events: Ummm.... mockturtletale has corrupted me into reading pretty much solely Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles fic, so there's that. I listen to the entirety of every Breakfast Show Grimmy does, because even though he's done some problematic things I'm pathetically charmed by him and I think if I weren't in love with Harold, I'd be hopelessly gone for him. That's not true, I am gone for him. I haven't felt this way about people I don't know in .... ever, really, so. I'll have you all know that I've read every single Harry/Nick fic I've come across, including those in first person, those that are actually Harry/Louis (a ship that I really don't ship), and literally every single one. So.

There is no long version, actually. I am just reading fic and harassing Clo to write me more fic and I've written like 800 words of my own fic that I might some day finish? I've also written Clo a couple of other short scenes, 600 or 700 words each, one Harry/Zayn and one where Louis calls Harry out on being in love with Nick. (IN A FRIENDLY WAY. It isn't angsty. Louis isn't upset about it. I feel it's necessary to clarify that, but I don't know why.)

The end!!

happy birthday to meeeeee!!!!

romasquerade — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 03:28:19 GMT

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT POST ABOUT IMPORTANT THINGS.

Yes it IS in fact almost three weeks past my birthday and I AM still posting about it, because why would you NOT. Birthdays are the best holidays ever, this year has totally redeemed itself from last, in spades and by miles and with flying colors.

So as a birthday present to myself last Tuesday, I went and got myself a tattoo. So pic and a little bit of that under the cut!

This was right after it was done! It is now more or less entirely healed, I think??? There's one little part that's yet to peel off, on the bottom corner of the 8, but everything else seems to have gone fine. I'm so THRILLED with it. The 28 stands for 'to infinity', which is mostly a representation of the fact that I have infinity before me and that I can take whatever I want from it, and stuff like that. It also has a lot of personal meaning beyond that, being that the 28th (of January) is a super important date to me and mockturtletale, and a bit more besides.

ALSO FOR MY BIRTHDAY, MY BEST FRIEND WAS BETTER THAN YOURS COULD EVER BE, SORRY NOT SORRY. Clo did all sorts of GLORIOUS things for me, inlcuding drawing me a picture, making me a glorious audio post, taking lots of pictures, and the one most important to this post ... she wrote me a fic!

Y'all need to read this immediately, basically. It's called 'just to get it blessed', it's Harry/Zayn, canonical (for the most part -- derivations from canon stated in the author's notes), and it is here on AO3, and here's why you should read it ASAP:

It's described as coming!out fic, which it is, but it's also so much MORE than that. I don't know how many of y'all listened to my long, rambly 1D voice meme, but basically I mentioned how unrealistic I find it in fic when every or any one of the members is taken for granted as gay, or bi, or whatever -- that there's rarely any struggle there. So she took that and RAN with it, and wrote 12,000 words of... what I think is really one of the best characterizations of some of these characters that I've yet seen. And I'm not saying that because it's my fic, or because my best friend wrote it, but because it's just ... it's a fantastic story.

In it, Zayn struggles with his sexuality in... a really less conventional but so realistic and so refreshing way; the story warns for 'angst', which it has, a bit, but not in the soul-crushing way -- it doesn't deal with any disorders or anything, just with Zayn coming to terms with his sexuality in a way that he can express to the world around him. In the middle of all of that is Harry, whom Zayn's been in love with for quite some time, but who doesn't even entertain the idea of Harry being interested back -- both because he doesn't expect Harry to be interested in dudes, and because he doesn't expect Harry to be interested in him.

The dynamics described and illustrated between the boys, individually and as a group, are fantastic, really, really, amazingly well-done. Another thing that's considered here is how the band might react to some of the horrifyingly intrusive questions interviewers and fans ask them, how everyone takes that in personally and how it affects everyone as a group, and how it ends up affecting Zayn on a very personal level.

On top of all that, while Clo finished it in a rush for me last night (because she is FLAWLESS and couldn't stand how late she already was and wanted to finish it as quickly as possible after having very tragically (that sounds sarcastic -- it isn't at all) lost a TON of her writings in a flood), so there are a few typos here and there, but as per ALWAYS with Clo, it's so unbelivably well written I want to puke with it. The way she handles words, the metaphors she makes with feelings and the body and emotions and making it all so visceral, so real, makes you think about it in ways you'd never thought to before and it's -- I fucking love the way she writes, and that carries over to this so well.

Have an OT5 quote:

"They're best friends, and sometimes they're too tired or confused to say that out loud - so to be able to stand up there and say it with their smiles, with their hands and their voices tied up with words that aren't what they mean to say but say it anyway - that's their gift and their reward."

Now go read it!!!!!!!!!!!!

romasquerade — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 20:53:39 GMT

Have I mentioned, yet, how inconvenient it is to live so close to the President?

It's a hassle. I don't know how people who live in DC do it, although I suspect it works better because it happens on a more regular basis than once every couple of months. As it is, Obama decided to come home the weekend I decided to be in Detroit, and as a result, I now have a parking ticket that I'm sure is like $60 because I left before they put up signs saying he'd be back and they were shutting the street down. There is a much longer story here, which has to do with how my roommates can't be assed to take 5 minutes to move my car after they offered to so that I wouldn't get said ticket, but then asked if they could borrow the car to go grocery shopping while I was gone, and I'm just baffled as to how one is capable of driving today but not yesterday.

Do I sound bitter? Whoops.

A word of advice to anyone deciding to live in Chicago, ever: don't have a car. Yes, it is convenient for grocery shopping, and when you're going to a concert at 9pm and the venue has a parking lot and you don't want to take public transit all the way from the north side at midnight, it is also pretty useful, and it's handy for getting to work sometimes, but oh MAN it's a pain. You will inevitably be one of few people with a car, which means everyone will want to use your car, and when you say, "Hey, I need x amount of money for doing this," and they say, "But gas is $4/gallon, you get 30 miles to the gallon, and we only went for five miles! We should pay less!" they will never understand that while that may be true, they are not paying the $60 tickets for the car that come once a month for some reason, or the $250 when it gets towed, or for fixing the brakes when they are broken, or getting new tires, and they can chip in for everything, thanks.

I think I probably still sound bitter. Having a car is too expensive, and it can go back to living in Detroit ASAP, thanks. Sighs heavily.

Anyway. It was my birthday recently! It was awesome. Lollapalooza was just as fantastic as I'd imagined, although Saturday they evacuated the park about 5 minutes before Empires set was supposed to start because of severe weather, and then the festival was shut down for like two hours and Empires weren't rescheduled and I was HEARTBROKEN. The Weekend still played, and Bloc Party, and they were FANTASTIC, and I saw fun. and wished they'd played more songs from Aim & Ignite and was yelled at on SEVERAL occasions by fans for being a "fake fan" because We Are Young played just about halfway through which was when I'd decided previously to leave for The Weekend so I left right after it played and I just wanted to shout at people because reasons.

BUT THEN EMPIRES GOT RE-SCHEDULED FOR SUNDAY WHICH WAS MY ACTUAL BIRTHDAY AND GLORIOUSNESS ENSUED. They were so fucking good, oh my GOD. There was so much energy and Sean was jumping around like wild and then JUMPED ON TOP OF THE CROWD where I was standing and almost BROKE MY ARM and then continued singing Bang jumping around the crowd and the security personnel were SO UNHAPPY and it was the literal best.

Everything else was good, too, I guess. IT WAS ALL SO FANTASTIC REALLY and I got to see The Jezabels perform 'Hurt Me' which is my favorite song and basically it was phenomenal. Then my dad came and hung out with me for a couple days and then on Thursday I came back to Detroit to hang out with my mom! It's been a lovely, relaxing week. I head back tonight and go back to work tomorrow but it was a really nice break and I think I'll be better for it!

ONE DIRECTION THOUGH. I just watched the Olympic closing ceremonies and cried for like 15 minutes straight about it because ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME. I could talk for days about the fact that Harold was probably sick with nerves but they all killed it anyway and that this single was released a year ago and that they've only been a band for a year and KILL ME PLEASE. I'll spare the word vomit because it's rather repetitive and mostly on Tumblr and Skype but basically none of this is okay.

Also I opened a word doc yesterday and titled it 'mall!au' and wrote words in it, which is.... progress?? I keep wanting to title things from lyrics in songs but then having nothing to write about to give that title, o well. Here's this, because you needed it in your life:

house of balloons

romasquerade — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 05:24:03 GMT

Livejournal will have you know that my birthday is both today AND Sunday. Right you are, LJ, right you are. I officially declared it my birthday at 8:52PM today after I spent two hours cleaning the whole kitchen and washing every dish in the apartment and made everybody dinner last night and washed half of those dishes, too. I am not doing ANYTHING for the rest of the weekend that isn't playing Teen Wolf drinking games, sneaking gin into Lollapalooza, or generally being at Lollapalooza.

I am THRILLED for Lolla. I'm also thrilled to have three days off of work, which is three days more than I've had for two weeks. Not that they'll be at all restful, what with spending 11 hours every day up and dancing and enjoying music. Speaking of enjoying music, Saturday is going to be the greatest day of my life?! Empires, The Temper Trap, Fun., The Weekend, Bloc Party, and Frank Ocean (and/or The Red Hot Chili Peppers) all in a row. None of them overlap, I have time to move from stage to stage between all of them, basically I can't WAIT. Tomorrow's also going to be really good. Sunday I'm a TAD disappointed about because Florence and the Machine is playing at the same time as Of Monsters and Men and The Jezabels which were the three bands I really wanted to see on Sunday and I didn't want to have to CHOOSE, but it'll still be awesome. Sunday's gonna be good for checking out new artists and having a more chill day.

mockturtletale sent me a few songs by The Weekend a couple weeks ago in a mix she made me, and then yesterday she sent me the House of Balloons mixtape and I can't fucking stop listening to it, it's so fucking GOOD. I was all about Wicked Games yesterday but House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls is my jam today, I'm honestly head over heels for this mixtape and I can't WAIT to see him live on Saturday.

Monday I go back to work again but I have the rest of next week off because my dad is coming to visit me and then I'm going to go see my mom, and I am REALLY looking forward to the time off and the time away. I'm lame and miss my parents, or something, or at least miss my mom's cooking and my dad's penchant for delicious restaurants. My mom also bought me a massage for my birthday that I get to cash in on next weekend and I'm STOKED, my back is killing me after all of the tight wire stuff I did last weekend for the circus, children are HEAVY. We also get to go to my favorite restaurant and I'm very much looking forward to it.

Umm... fandom-wise I'm really bummed about the lack of fic in the One Direction fandom that I wanna read right now, so I'm back to re-reading Inception fic. I'm considering dipping my toes in some Teen Wolf fic but that sounds dangerous and I'm still bracing myself for reading Stiles/Derek fic whichis 99% of what's available. I'm thinking about WRITING more 1D fic though, that counts, right????

Right.

Have a picture of Harold that's ruining my life.

a-oo

romasquerade — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 02:52:32 GMT

So I started watching Teen Wolf. I blame this entirely on mockturtletale, for no real reason other than that I CAN. She is the reason for all the worst (read: best) things in my life. I also finished watching Teen Wolf in about three days, which all things considered is not necessarily all that impressive (I mean, there are only 21 episodes), but I feel like my life has been consumed by it. Yesterday at work, I was really excited to get home because I wanted to watch more, and today at work I was heartbroken because I could not come home and watch more, because there was no more to watch.

I'm in love with it. It is of course ridiculous, and the special effects are awful, and for something that's aired on Music TV, I seriously question its musical choices sometimes, but I have a LOT of feelings about it. Most of which were shouted at darelose, who generously offered to rewatch the series while I watched it, which -- thank GOD, I could not have done that on my own. She also conned me into promising to write her Teen Wolf FIC? She's sneaky. But the joke's on her, because she promised ME fic, and hers is going to be 100x better than anything I write.

Speaking of fic, though, if anyone here ships Stiles/Derek and could explain to me why, that would be cool? I can maybe ship it in a theoretical sense, if there were some character development on both ends (and some character interaction other than trying to make sure everyone they know stays alive), but in the actual show....... I just don't see it at ALL. It's actually one of the ships I can see the LEAST in the show, I just really don't see any chemistry between them? And if someone else does and could point that out to me, I'd totally be up for that, because I'm interested in seeing how everyone else looks at their relationship!

On another note, though, this has been a really weird couple of weeks and I'm not sure why. It has been an emotional ROLLERCOASTER which has been wholly exhausting and pretty much the only time things feel even are when I'm chatting with mockturtletale, which hasn't even happened much because I'm the worst and can't manage to figure out a schedule whereby I'm not at work or asleep while she's awake. The universe is conspiring to ruin us, starting with One Direction and now by KEEPING US APART, and it's not cool. That wasn't a tangent I'd intended to go on, but whatever.

Work is okay, I guess. I work every day for the next ... until next Friday. Then I have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (my birthday!!!!!) off, and LOLLAPALOOZA IS HAPPENING AND I CANNOT FUCKING WAIT, and then back to work. I still need another job, ideally, or some steadier work with the circus, but I'm getting by.

Seeing the same four people, and very few other people, every day for the past two months is really getting to me. I had to go downtown and sit in a park and breathe for an hour after work today just so I could try to calm down away from my apartment and neighborhood and I still felt incredibly on edge and irritable as soon as I walked in the door and made a beeline for my room. I'm going home for the weekend in a couple of weeks, or going back to visit my mom or however you want to phrase that, home is such a strange fucking concept, who even came up with it -- I'm going back to Detroit in two and a half weeks, after my birthday, and it'll be really nice to get away, I think. I'd go visit some family in the suburbs this weekend but I have to work every day, alas.

I bought A Game of Thrones today, the book, and I'm going to go read it in an hour or so before I go to bed hopefully by midnight. I've been sleeping TERRIBLY recently, the most I've gotten in the past two weeks or so having been last night when I got 5 hours from 5am to 10am, and I'm hoping I've gotten to the point where I can pass out by like .... midnight tonight or something and sleep until 7:30. I bought some melatonin at the CVS yesterday on a few peoples' recommendation, but it's my last attempt before I go see a doctor about this. On that note, though, after six years (I think this weekend is officially my six year anniversary actually! Is it weird that I can like....pinpoint the exact night that I stopped being able to sleep? Is that indicative of some kind of trauma? I don't recall it being a traumatic night, but whenever I think about the fact that I know the exact day that I stopped being able to sleep, it's just really weird.) -- after six years, my mother has determined that this is not "just a phase," and has agreed to help me find a doctor if this melatonin thing doesn't work out! So that's exciting!! Or something!! I'm really hoping this melatonin will work though because any and all sleeping pills I've tried in the past just make me unholy levels of groggy and feeling fucking weird the next morning. But I'm also really sick of not sleeping, so.

I'm really excited about GOT, though, I read the prologue in the park this afternoon and I'm excited to get back to it.

That's all, folks! I hope you're all doing well and enjoying the summer and whatnot!!

THE END OF MY FUNCTIONING LIFE

romasquerade — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 04:31:29 GMT

I did the 1D voice meme, because .... reasons. It's 15 minutes long. I do not blame you if you don't want to listen to me speak for 15 minutes. I ramble SO MUCH. But. Here!!!!!!!

I hope this works??? Oh god, sorry, it's so boring I don't even. I've never done just a voice thing!! It was so weird! IDK okay yeah.

aloha

romasquerade — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 23:11:41 GMT

HELLO LIVEJOURNAL, it's been a while. And by a while I mean like a week or something, but it feels like MUCH longer. I've been super busy recently, working 30 hours last week in 4 days (this is actually only impressive because 15 of them were on one day ((the 4th, no less, which was about 105 degrees and all of my work that day was physical))), and then one of my very good friends came to visit over the weekend and we had a blast pretending (on my part at least) to be tourists downtown and doing things like go to the Art Institute, ~~Willis~~ Sears Tower, walking up Michigan Ave. and walking into shops that we could not possibly afford to purchase anything from, etc. It was a good, but busy, and occasionally kind of stressful week!

I have returned, however, as has my beloved mockturtletale to me, and as soon as she's through watching tv I'm going to shout fic at her and then hopefully actually WRITE something, maybe???? I watched this 1D US tour footage and my love for Zayn Malik intensified to levels I didn't think it could reach, but that child is a FOOL, and I was 100 fics about him and Louis being partners in crime, and also about him and Harry being in love, and about him and Liam being BFFS (and also maybe being in love), and about him and Niall possibly being in love. Sometimes. Maybe.

I.... have nothing exciting to say. Have some gifs of Harold, because he's still my favorite. Credit to harryhug @ tumblr.

but never composed

romasquerade — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 22:15:58 GMT

The boys continue to ruin my life and make me miserable, and a list of people surprised by this contains no names. I am having FEELINGS about the end of this tour, namely that I wish it wouldn't. I don't know what I'm going to do without a constant source of concert videos and photos and stories. If they're in the studio, HOW WILL I KNOW WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE EVERY DAY. HOW WILL I KNOW WHO TOUCHES WHO THE MOST. Oh god, I am the creepiest. The actual creepiest.

I may or may not have already considered buying a ticket for when they come to Chicago in 2013, but also.... That would be ridiculous because that is literally A YEAR AWAY, how am I supposed to know where I will be/what I'll be doing in a year. Why would you even make tickets available a year in advance, WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT. Sigh.

My head has also been wondering what One Direction would sound like if they were covered by Pop Goes Punk. I REALLY want to hear this. Particularly I want to hear "Gotta Be You" because I can hear that line in my head, and the screaming starts with 'you'. It's a very, very strange thing to have on repeat in my head. I am also very interested in 1D dubstep remixes, but the only ones I've found are really terrible, which is heartbreaking. ;_;

I think this fandom has too much AU. I really really really want to read 1,000,000 words about this band being in a band, and being bros in a band and being on a tour bus and just. GIVE ME ALL THE NON-AU. I've never wanted that in my life, but it feels like EVERY fic in this fandom is AU, and I just wanna appreciate these boys as who they are for a little while. I guess that means I should press pause in writing my own AUs in favor of working on my non-AUs. Hmm.

now come on

romasquerade — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 07:17:37 GMT

I HONESTLY HATE THIS BAND.

Liam and Zayn decided it'd be cool if Liam named his firstborn 'Taylor' and now I have never been so miserable, except for when Zayn looked at Liam really really really sadly when Liam said, "I guess you can't always get what you want" or whatever in that interview. I haven't even watched the video, I've just seen the gif, but I don't think I can watch the video. I've cried enough tonight as it IS. (Seriously though. I was reading Zayn's section of Dare to Dream and decided it would be fun to video myself doing it, so now I have videographic evidence of the fact that this band has ACTUALLY MADE ME CRY. The video is five minutes of me clutching a stuffed critter that mockturtletale sent me whose name I have tragically forgotten and C R Y I N G. Sobbing into my pillow and shaking my head at two points. What is wrong with me.)

(I'm also having a lot of Zayn feelings tonight.)

But anyway. Why does this band think it's okay to consider naming any of their firstborns my same name. W H Y.

(The next paragraph contains discussion of a wound and blood, so... don't read it if that's not your thing, please!)

Sigh. In other news, I cut my finger open with a bread knife on accident last night trying to slice an old loaf of bread that didn't want to cut, resulting in the knife slipping and cutting open my uppermost knuckle of my pointer finger of my left hand. It has been bleeding for over 24 hours now and I think that probably warrants stitches but I don't have time for that so it just gets a tight bandaid that I change every few hours. It HURTS. A LOT. Typing in particular is very painful, which is too bad, because I have to type a lot at work and also in my life. This thing is never, ever going to heal, I don't think. Like twenty minutes ago I accidentally bent my finger too much and totally reopened everything (not that it'd ever really closed?) and it began bleeding profusely again and I got blood all over my keyboard and cleaning it was also painful. My life is hard, y'all. So very, very hard.

Okay. I'm going to go respond to Clo's chatfic email (and subsequently spew my Zayn feelings all over gmail), and then shout about fic some more and then maybe watch Scrubs and sleep, or something.

What fic are you guys excited about right now?! What are you writing, what do you want to write, what do you want written, what's your favorite fic that you've read recently, etc. I want to spend all weekend shouting about fic, please help me in my endeavor.

romasquerade — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 20:24:21 GMT

In an effort to ruin my life, Harold has spent the last week driving around LA in a Ferrari.

I'm not sure how well any of you know me, but I have a weakness for really nice sports cars. Aston Martins make me legitimately weak in the knees to see, and I have a special fondness for Ferraris in that when I went to highschool in one of the midwest's wealthiest suburbs, they were the cars that the wealthy folk would drive around casually. That KILLS me. And now Harry's driving around in this sleek ass black Ferrari and his stupid fucking beanie, trying to look pouty and mysterious like Zayn:

and I have never been this miserable before. This child is YOUNGER THAN I AM, running around in this car, and I didn't know it was possible to have more feelings and then this happened. It's rendered me entirely unable to function.

Sigh. To wander into real life for a second, this week has been WEIRD. And exhausting. My job is terribly easy but we're still ironing out the kinks of me having access to edit content on our website and then my incredibly old desktop at work couldn't play sound the other day and it was terrible, because my only job for the afternoon was to transcribe a lecture. It's possible that I lost my keys a week after getting them, also. Woops. ;_; I've also been trying to figure out this whole having roommates thing, coming up with cleaning and cooking schedules, dealing with the fact that my car got towed and convincing my roommates that yes, you all use my car also, so maybe it was my car that I didn't see the sign for, but you can all pitch in $15 out of the $200 I needed to get it back, or else you don't get to use it anymore. I am also trying very hard to find another job because as it turns out, making enough money to barely cover rent and the bare minimum of groceries is ... not the easiest or best way to live! So I have sold my soul to my school's telefund and hopefully the week after next I'll be able to call all of our alumni and ask for donations or something for 12 hours a week and I will thus be working 27 hours a week instead of 15, which will definitely make my life much, much easier.

And then in mid-July I have a circus gig for a few days that'll make me about $70/day, which I am EXCITED FOR. The circus is my favorite. I am still sad daily that the federal work/study didn't work out and I couldn't work more for the circus. ;_;

This weekend was a lot of fun, though! A Panera opened up on the north side that has suggested donation amounts instead of actual prices? So even though I could only afford to spend $7 on food then and we had no food in the house, I could still get a meal, and then when I get paid next week and have a few more dollars to spare I can go and donate more than the price of my meal to make up for that. So some of my roommates and I went up there on Friday night but then decided to explore Lincoln Park because we'd never been there before, and then we ended up probably twenty blocks north in boystown where Chicago Pride was going on, and we all had a lot of fun! And yesterday my cousin's husband had a birthday party that I went to and I got to see some family that I hadn't for a while, and I got delicious BBQ and other great food and then my cousin sent me home with some leftover deep dish pizza? Which I'm going to go heat up for lunch here in a few minutes.

SPEAKING OF CIRCUS, THOUGH (a little late), I'm not fully present in any fandom until I start planning a circus AU, which has officially happened with 1D as of this afternoon, so THERE YOU GO. Niall and Liam are really great bases for acro and Niall is fantastic on the spanish web, Louis is a flyer and he does aerials with Harry, who is the best aerialist their troupe has seen in an incredibly long time, and Zayn dabbles a little bit in everything but his favorite is catching Harry on the trap. I'm not sure what the plot is yet, but the image of Harry flying through the air like that is yet another on the list of things that make me hate this band.

On another fic note, harriet_vane posted something in her tags on Tumblr earlier today (is that creepy? oh well) that made me want to write a highschool AU where Liam doesn't know that he's Zayn's boyfriend. Everyone else knows it, but sometimes people will say to Liam something about "his boyfriend" and he'll get really confused, but people will just smile indulgently at him. And Harry, Louis and Niall will refer to him and Zayn as boyfriends, but Liam just thinks it's something weird that they do, like all the other weird things they do. Because, like ... Of course he likes Zayn, he's had a crush on him for years, and he and Zayn hang out a lot, but they're just best friends. And they hang out a lot. And sometimes Zayn kisses him, but Zayn's weird, it doesn't mean anything. And if Zayn gets drunk sometimes and they make out, seriously, it doesn't mean anything.

I'm not quite sure yet how he figures out that they're boyfriends, but eventually someone clues him in.

'til human voices wake us

romasquerade — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 16:24:39 GMT

GUYS. I wrote more fic. It's not long, but it really hurt to write, so whatever. It is posted at the long awaited (or not so long awaited) community for mockturtletale and I, which we have created (mostly she has, though, she did everything and deserves all the credit) over at nutricula. Y'all should add it, or something!! But here's the first thing posted in it:

Title: 'Til Human Voices Wake Us
Pairing: Harry/Zayn
Rating: G
Words: 1800
Warnings: none
Summary: Harry's tired, so Zayn takes care of him.
A/N: This is shamelessly self-indulgent. I wrote it because I was as tired as Harry is in it a couple of weeks ago, and I wished someone would take care of me, so instead I had someone take care of Harry. It's ... This is kind of set in an indiscriminate universe. Harry and Zayn live together, and in my mind it's an alternate universe where Zayn is a traveling photographer and Harry is his boyfriend and they live in London, but it could just as easily be set in the universe we live in now, except with Harry and Zayn living together instead of Harry and Louis. Beta'd and British-ized by my dearest mockturtletale, whom this is for, as I suspect all things in this fandom will be. Title and cut text from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.

( when the wind blows the water white and black )

glitter on the west streets

romasquerade — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 00:01:40 GMT

I am officially moved into my first apartment! That is actually sort of a lie, I have so many boxes and stuff to move tomorrow because the storage people weren't around today, but I have keys and a suitcase in my room and a room and a private bathroom and granite countertops and stainless steel appliances because this place is SO NICE. It's unbelievable!! I have no idea how I'm paying as little money per month as I'm paying for an apartment this nice, but I am not going to complain about it, it's so lovely. My room has a door out to the back porch and everything!!

That SAID, for some reason I thought it would be fun to move into an apartment a block away from where President Obama lives in Chicago. And decided to move in while he (or someone in his family) was home. HAHAHA YOU GUYS THIS WAS THE BEST IDEA OF MY LIFE. Not. Not at all. I have to park some four blocks away and when I was coming in I had to have my suitcase, backpack and purse searched by several different police officers and also the bomb dog. Look, y'all, I get it, the President is a big deal and it's important to make sure that no one is coming in with anything explosive or harmful or whatever. But tomorrow I have to move 20 boxes or something to that effect, and each and every one of them has to be opened, searched, and sniffed. Tomorrow is going to be the longest day of my LIFE, oh god.

And now, a change of pace.

Being asexual is such a strange experience when trying to interact with the rest of the world. Not only does every conversation go something like "So, I'm asexual." "Oh what does that mean?" "I'm not sexually attracted to anybody." "Well you just haven't met the right person yet/You'll change your mind someday/It's probably just a phase." which is ... I mean it is never ever fun for somebody to tell you that your identity is false or invalid!! It actually feels pretty shitty. Just in case any of you couldn't guess that, which I'm sure you could've.

But not only that, but when you're ... actually trying to navigate a relationship when only one party is asexual, I find that it's very confusing and very difficult. It's been my experience that other people take it super personally when I say "I'm not sexually attracted to you" and all of the things that are implied in that, which is tough, you know? Attraction isn't something that anybody should ever be offended by (although I mean that isn't really fair, of course, I've been offended by someone not being attracted to me just as much as anybody, but), because it isn't really a choice. I wasn't born and checked a box saying that I chose not to ever be sexually attracted to anyone! But people don't tend to understand that my personal lack of sexual attraction is absolutely no indication of objective physical attractiveness (which, let's be real, isn't even a thing -- attraction can never be anything BUT subjective), and then get offended by it. That's tricky! It's hard for me to convince people that I'm interested in them even though I'm not interested in necessarily having sex with them or in ~fooling around~ or what have you. For a lot of people that's a deal breaker, which sucks.

I mean, that said, I am not actively disgusted or disinterested in sex or sexual activities or whatever, so there's a balance, but it's a tough one to manage. Being asexual is not a very well understood identity, I wish more people knew what it was/knew how to interact with asexual people. But I guess the only way that can happen I guess is for me to try and educate and be patient with people who are learning about it! So if any of you guys have any questions about what asexuality is or what my experience has been like, I'm happy to talk about that! I'm not really sure what the point of this whole tangent was, but it came to mind this week so I thought I'd write about it.

In FANDOM NEWS, which is the best news of all the news of course, things are progressing well! I'm almost done writing the most self-indulgent story I've ever even thought about writing in my life, so that will be posted in the next few days hopefully.

mockturtletale and I have decided to make ourselves a little fic comm for us to post to, so you can probably look for that in the next couple of days as well! The aforementioned self-indulgent piece will probably be posted there, as well as my old Liam/Zayn fic, and I think Clo's about done with a couple of things as well, so yeah! We're excited about it!

I haven't got much news other than this, though, but I thought I'd update. I start work this week, but that will take up so much less time than school did, so I'll definitely be around a lot in the future! I'm super excited for this summer!

hallelujah

romasquerade — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 10:19:21 GMT

I'M DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE

100oz of Redbull, 20 cups of tea, 120 hours awake, and four days late, I am finished with the god damn finals week from hell, and none of you (save maybe mockturtletale who experienced my every emotion via Twitter, AIM, and email) have any idea how much relief I feel. I CAN BREATHE AGAIN!!!! (I can't actually. Staying awake for said 120 hours gave me the worst head cold of my life that's made its way into my lungs and every time I try to breathe, I cough, but that is BESIDE THE POINT.)

It is summer!! I have no responsibilities (except for work woops) until OCTOBER. ONE DIRECTION FANDOM, LET ME LOVE YOU DOWN. Y'all have NO IDEA how excited I am to start getting serious about writing. I have at least five stories planned out, and Clo and I are basically going to be spending all summer shouting plots and each other and making 'em happen. SPEAKING of which, she's writing me maybe three or four different pieces right now and you guys should be excited about ALL of them, because they're going to be fucking fantastic.

In other words, this fandom isn't gonna know what's hit it, in a couple of weeks. BATTEN/BUTTON/WHATEVER DOWN THE HATCHES or whatever that phrase is, and prepare for a HURRICANE of activity. It's gonna be good. I'm particularly excited to read Dare to Dream.

In OTHER news, Empires released Garage Hymns today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Clo and I had a listening party around midnight and while I only gave the album a moderately generous 7/10, I heard THREE NEW EMPIRES SONGS TODAY. Two of which I think I'm really going to love!! If any of you guys are into them, or into really great alt/indie/whatever rock music, I definitely suggest you go sample a couple of songs off of Empires's new album Garage Hymns! (Try Shame, Can't Steal Your Heart Away, or maybe Hard Times.)

Before this all starts, though, I'm gonna go sleep for an hour before I have to start the rest of my day.

(Let's talk about this, I have feelings.)

ETA. I've started reading Dare to Dream and it is a VERY good thing I put this off until after I was finished with everything. I got to the picture of Harry with the juggling balls and his goddamn grin and that stupid 'I like a challenge' quote and I had to put my computer down and talk to my dog about my feelings. He looked at me for a while before he realized I didn't have food, and then he wandered off, and I was left to talk about how much I hate Harry Styles to my stuffed animals. Sigh.

ETA2. Of COURSE you've paid your mother back for all the clothes you made her buy you for X Factor you stupid fool. I hate you.

ETA3.

OF COURSE, HAROLD. GET THE FUCK OUT.

ETA4. Liam Payne style.

OF COURSE YOU DO YOUR OWN FUCKING IRONING LIAM NOBODY WANTS YOU HERE

to infinity and beyond

romasquerade — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 03:13:39 GMT

Here, have a potentially Zayn/image-heavy post about how mockturtletale is the best thing to have ever happened to my life/the universe.

So here's the deal: finals week is beating more crap out of me than I thought existed in the universe. I woke up at 11am on Sunday morning and have not been asleep since (that's..... 48 plus... almost 58 hours right now that I've been awake!!!). I am probably not going to catch some sleep until tomorrow night at the earliest, and likely not until Thursday. My previous record was 68 hours awake and I am blowing that OUT OF THE WATER. I'll be proud in like a month or four years or something, but for now I am miserable. Basically this has been me since... well, Sunday:

So I'm about to wander out of the library sometime around 7am this morning and and I get a message from Clo with all the sad faces about how she wishes I was asleep and whatnot and wishing me good luck on my exam this morning because she is the SWEETEST. And then I come back and I go back to the library and I pull out my computer and THERE SHE IS waiting for me online to keep me company while I do MORE FINALS SHIT (seriously you guys everyone I've seen today has asked me if I'm okay and I'm just like 'yeah finals u no, where fun comes to die and all that' and I tell them my schedule this week and they are all INCREDULOUS I'm not sure how I got the actual worst finals schedule of anyone ever, but I did). Because she is PERFECT.

So I'm working on this philosophy paper that I've been working on .. well not really THAT long, I guess seriously working on it since last night, trying to outline and draft and stuff and discarding like eighty gazillion ideas and ANYWAY, so I'm really stressed about this thing because it's due today (let's not talk about my inability not to procrastinate, that's not even close to the point) and I haven't slept in 48 hours and she's just sitting there on AIM telling me to get over myself and the exhaustion and pump through it and she's telling me about the fic she's gonna write and generally being fantastic because I don't think she knows how not to be.

And then I accidentally watch that stupid, horrible interview from Detroit where the radio show I used to listen to every morning on my drive to school just proved that they were absolute dicks and asked literally the worst things I've ever heard, DEFINITELY worse than the fanfic girl. And so I'm sitting there in the middle of the library, 3 in the afternoon, been awake for like 50 hours or something, stressed to death about this paper and now this radio show that I TRUSTED made me legitimately nauseous and guys, guys I'm not sure what trickery Clo pulled put somehow she managed to not only get me not to crawl under the table and sob but also got me to keep working on this paper. IT WAS SOME TRUE RAGS-TO-RICHES STUFF GUYS, I think she's actually probably my fairy godmother.

So then she's like, "How much longer do you think you're going to have to be awake?" And I'm like "UMM forever but for real at least another 30-ish hours." AND THEN SHE GOES

"I CAN DO THAT."

And so now this fool is determined to stay up with me while I toil on through paper after paper and awake after awake and not only that, but as a REWARD for finishing my paper, she told me the first part of the story where Zayn and Harry are in a totally dysfunction not-relationship until Liam comes along and fixes it and they threesome.

I AM THE LUCKIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD.

And basically she's cheering me on while I write like 10,000 words of ESSAYS and promising to write me all the 1D fic once this weekend rolls around and I can breathe again and you GUYS.

I'm really really emotional and exhausted and stressed out right now but basically this is a post where I tell you that the best decision I ever made in life was being brave for the first time in my life and sending her a message on MSN even though I was convinced for the first month that we talked that she didn't like me at ALL. But basically what I got out of it was the best best friend anyone could ever, ever ask for. I'm tearing up in the library right now writing this but I DON'T EVEN CARE, I felt I needed to express this somewhere and it would've been hard for me to send her all of this on AIM, and anyway, you all should love her too because if you DON'T then you're kind of silly and you must not be thinking straight. She's going to write the Liam/Harry/Zayn threesome fic that you never knew you needed, even if I won't let you be her best friend (I'm selfish like that but lbr you would be too if your best friend was this fabulous), you should love her for THAT.

Okay that's all I think.

and out through the door

romasquerade — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 07:36:34 GMT

Today was ROUGH, y'all.

The only thing worse in my life today than the One Direction fandom on Tumblr was the aftermath of drinking three sidecars and two margaritas in about an hour (and then plenty after that -- last night was just about the biggest shitshow I and several of my peers have ever experienced), and then Liam had to go and get angry on Twitter and it's entirely possible that I spent an hour today sobbing about how much I hate everybody (including myself and my poor, poor life decisions).

I have SO MUCH TO DO. One would think that one would be prepared for finals week the third time through -- this is false, one is most definitely not. You guys, I have to write a ten page paper for Tuesday that I haven not yet done the reading for, and then a paper after that for Wednesday which I spent six hours doing the reading for today (it was twenty pages, but almost every other phrase was 'parodic recontextualization' and I hope that gives you some kind of idea about how horrible convoluted this text was), and then a twenty page paper due on Thursday that I have approximately an outline for. I also have an exam on Tuesday morning that I need to be 100x more worried about because I'm probably about to fail that class.

I do not know when sleep is going to be a thing that I do. I also have to pack my ENTIRE ROOM which is not something I had even THOUGHT about before now, but which is going to take me approximately forever. I also have to do laundry at some point, and buy a new pair of jeans, since my dog ate one of the other two pairs I wear. I have to do all of this and be ready to be on a plane by 10am on Friday morning.

If I make it out of the next four days alive, I am first going to sleep for at least two days straight and then I am going to write ALL OF THE FIC. That's all I really want to do, if we're being honest. I have six or seven google docs with between 1,000 and 5,000 words of fic and I just want to finish them. And then write more. And then make mockturtletale write me all of the fic, which she has PROMISED ME that she'll do. She's such a fucking tease, we'll be having a plenty sane conversation and then out of nowhere she'll be like 'Listening to Tell Me A Lie makes me want a fic where Harry and Zayn are in a dysfunctional relationship and then Liam fixes it and they threesome.' I NEED SOMEBODY TO HELP ME PRESSURE HER INTO DOING THIS, because I think if I had the promise of that waiting for me at the end of this week, it would not seem so daunting.

I probably will not make it out of this alive. It's been nice knowing y'all, I'm glad I met a couple of solid folk in the One Direction fandom before I died, etc. I am mostly shocked that Harry Styles wasn't the direct cause of my death.

romasquerade — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 07:26:30 GMT

Here, have some of my thoughts on the One Direction fandom tonight and how generally terrible I think it is.

I'm gonna put a disclaimer up here and say I haven't actually seen this Much Music interview yet because I'm not in Canada and I don't have the patience to go seeking these things out right now, but lord almighty I have heard enough about it. This rant isn't really about that interview, though, it's about how what I've heard of that interview displays an incredibly widespread issue in this fandom regarding the lack of a fourth wall and the consequences of that. And there's no one here that might be reading this that wouldn't already know all of this, I guess, there's no one I'm trying to call out or try to convince, this is really just me ranting about a lack of respect.

I generally try very hard not to dwell on the negative aspects of fandom because I don't think that's productive and I don't think that's fun. I'm pretty good at isolating myself into little bubbles of safe spaces where people are respectful, where they understand boundaries and lines and fourth walls and whatnot, and that works for me. I can live in these bubbles, even mostly as a lurker, and be really happy, because a lot of great writing and discussion comes from them.

And I understand that the One Direction fandom, on the whole, is incredibly young. That makes sense. The band is made up of young, cute boys singing pop music. It's certainly not unheard of for people out of the tween years to be interested in that, but for the most part, I'm guessing girls 12-15/6 make up most of the fanbase.

That said, that isn't an excuse for the kind of behavior that exists in this fandom. Just because somebody is young does not exempt them from the responsibility of being a decent human being, of respecting the privacy and space of these boys as celebrities. I was young when I entered fandom, and of course I had a brief moment of oh my god maybe some day Brendon Urie will notice me and he'll fall in love with me because let's be real, Brendon is hot as shit. But that moment passed, and I realized that the Brendon Urie that I'd created in my head from interviews, stories, media, etc. was an entirely separate Brendon Urie than the one that actually exists, in real life.

That's the thing about celebrities, about real person fandom, I think, or at least that's how I look at it. I have this image in my head of a guy, and in my head his name is, say, Harry Styles, and he looks like Harry Styles, and he shares some qualities that I have reason to believe the Real Harry Styles has, but he is, under no circumstances, the Real Harry Styles. I ... write and read fanfiction about real people only insofar as I'm writing and reading about their likenesses. There are two Harry Styleses in my head, and they are probably a lot alike, but they are entirely different entities. There's a separation between them.

For a lot of young people in fandom, I think that isn't the case. I was talking to mockturtletale the other day and we were sort of discussing why this fandom seems to be so much worse than others. And the conclusion that we, or at least I, tentatively came to is that for so many people, this is their first experience with fandom, and that experience is happening in a world where fans are more connected than ever to celebrities. There are so many avenues for interaction with celebrities now, with twitter and twitcams, meet and greets, answering twitter questions at concerts, everything -- and that can be such a great thing. How fantastic is it to feel like these people you look up to and admire are real people, people more or less just like you are except maybe a little luckier and maybe a little more talented, that they exist in the same space that you do and they misspell things on Twitter just like you do and they're dorks and they're human. I think that's really phenomenal for so many reasons and in so many ways.

But of course it has its downsides. When this is your first real experience with celebrities, it's so easy to forget that you DON'T actually know these people. You haven't met them, you don't know who they are underneath what they decide (or who knows, maybe it's what someone else decides for them, but that's beside the point) to show you, and you can't go around pretending you do. It's really easy to lose track of that, though, because it all feels so close. After all, I can @harry_styles just as easily as I can @oneofmyfriends, and if I can communicate just as easily, then we must be just as good of friends, right?

There's a certain warped logic behind it that almost makes some sense, or at least almost makes it seem understandable. But that doesn't make it okay. Kids in bands aren't your friends, they're kids you've heard of and kids you know certain things about and kids you admire, but they aren't kids you know. And it isn't okay to act like they are.

I'm losing steam here, but basically this: respect the privacy and sanctity of these kids' lives. Realize that when you're writing fanfiction, you aren't writing about them, or you shouldn't be, and under no circumstances do they need to know about it. And of course they'll find it, figure it out, but there is under no circumstances any reason to point them in the direction of fandom. They need to have nothing to do with it. It's one thing to talk about the things they do as if the real people have done them (e.g. Niall needs to learn how to cover his god damn arms, or talking about their tweets, or the things they explicitly state in interviews), it's another to make up fictional scenarios and impart them upon the factual people.

And this goes tenfold for families and girlfriends, but that's a whole other story that I just don't have the energy to get into, like, ever.

Ugh, enough of that. Is anyone up for discussing their DVD watch party earlier this afternoon (or yesterday afternoon, whatever)? These children are PRECIOUS, they are all sitting around in a room TOGETHER, tweeting AT EACH OTHER, and taking ridiculous pictures. I can't fucking stand it, it's too much, I'm going home, start digging my grave, etc.

Have a picture of Harry that actually killed me:

detroit hustles harder

romasquerade — Tue, 29 May 2012 05:11:19 GMT

I am HOME! Which, in retrospect, is a very weird thing to say I think because I'm actually not home, I am actually back at school where I arrived after being in my "actual home" for the weekend, but whatever. Home is where the heart is, and my heart is not in Detroit right now, no matter how hard it hustles. (Which is very hard. I have the sweater that proves it, and also a onesie for my new baby niece.)

In my weekend in Detroit, I:

Learned that one cannot leave their car for even thirty seconds if one wishes for it not to get broken into (while you're watching, in the middle of the day, in front of someone's house when that someone is standing on the porch, also watching, also not doing anything)
Learned a LOT about rave culture, which FASCINATES ME to no end!!
Learned that the only reason to go to an electronic music festival is to people watch
Learned that breakdancing on rollerskates is a thing that people do, and that some people do really well
Learned that if I were still living there, I would have a chance to win One Direction tickets by way of decorating my car with regard to how excited I am about One Direction
Saw several cars with all of the boys' names on them, one of which notably had 'ZIAM' written in very large letters on the back with many, many hearts
Did not see any of my friends that didn't come home with me
Texted mockturtletale fanfiction that may or may not be any good, but which got wildly out of hand and is now 3x longer than I meant it to be
Saw Public Enemy perform live? That was unexpected! I would not ever have imagined seeing them at an electronic music festival! I shouted along with Flava Flav anyway, because why not. Ice-T MC'd, Coco may or may not have arrived for a surprise appearance at the end of their set -- I'd left by then to avoid the crowds
Did not sleep very much at ALL
Tried to re-beat Donkey Kong 64, but got bored when I couldn't figure out what to do without consulting a walkthrough

I am sure I did other things, also, but those things are not at the forefront of my mind. I am in TURBO MODE now, with less than two weeks left to go until the summer starts, trying to write ~40 pages of papers and study for this horrible Astronomy exam, which I will fail really no matter what. What this really means is that I'll be spending the next week online and then crying and stressing myself out a LOT the week after in attempts to get everything done, but then I'll go see Empires next Thursday after I've finished everything and then go back to Detroit to get ready to come back to Chicago for work, and all will be well.

Not much fandom news today, but OH WELL. I'm writing a lot. Everywhere. On every available surface with any writing utensil. I don't know what's come over me.

Let's look at the picture Harry Styles instagramed earlier today instead of thinking about how hectic my life will be pretty soon.

GET OUT.

and I decided you'd look well on me

romasquerade — Sat, 26 May 2012 03:17:55 GMT

First, some facts about Real Life, which is a thing that happens, I guess.

So despite the fact that I have exams in a week and a half and some forty pages of essays to write in between now and then, I decided to come home for Memorial Day weekend (we will not mention that I've had this plan all year, and that my mother decided a couple weeks ago that it would be a good weekend to visit my sister and her baby in Denver) (we will also not mention that that's probably fair, because her baby was born less than a week ago, and it is my mother's first grandchild). It's nice to be home! I have missed my large bed, and my dogs (a little), and the empty but loud streets of Detroit.

I have not missed the lack of air conditioning, or the fact that I do not have three dining halls and a market at my disposal whenever I'm hungry (which is always). I have not missed the dangerousness of living here, either, as evidenced by the fact that my friend and I have been home for one day and already this morning her car window got smashed and her backpack stolen, including all study materials, her passport, her wallet, and her laptop. To be fair, though, Detroit is not any less safe than Chicago, but still. In Chicago, at least, we have a police force that... cares. The police here in Detroit, when she filed the report, told her quite bluntly that her case was not and would never be a priority and that it was useless for her to even call them.

A+ Detroit. Keep it classy.

I'm holding out hope that the rest of the weekend goes more smoothly. I managed to replace my license from when I lost it, oh... two months ago now, and I'll get to replace my class ring hopefully tomorrow. My step-dad got us tickets to the Detroit Electronic Music Festival that's happening this weekend, which will be fun despite the fact that I have precisely zero feelings about electronic music. The people-watching is incredibly entertaining, though, and they have carnival food. Carnival food! I'm excited for funnel cake.

And now some fandom stuff, which is way more exciting!

I am officially writing four different 1D things right now, including a mall!AU, where all the boys work in a mall and have shenanigans and feelings, a piece where Zayn has a tattoo kink, the sequel to The Quiet Things, and.... what is currently being called The Epic, and, if it ... becomes what I want it to become, will follow the boys from the X-Factor to now/a little in the future, and basically be them figuring out that they all love each other in a different way than they were really prepared to. It's OT5, and I have officially written words in the google doc for it, so it's legit. Hopefully.

FOR this epic, mockturtletale did the most fantastic thing ever, which was write me a huge timeline of the boys's adventure, and you guys can find it HERE and should check it out immediately. She put it together incredibly quickly (and on like 60 hours without sleep), but despite this it is incredibly informative, incredibly impressive, and simply glorious. If you're writing anything in the 1D fandom and you're not sure what's happening canonically at the point you want to write about, NOW YOU CAN KNOW. It's wonderful. You should all go bow down to her and send her Harry/Zayn photos, which she can wake up to later, because she finally fell asleep.

So in conclusion: Real Life is a thing, I finally have a drivers license again, One Direction continues to ruin my life and I am writing a lot about it, and Clo is the best always. Things are pretty status quo!

mess to the masses

romasquerade — Thu, 24 May 2012 02:33:51 GMT

It's official, I have the icons to prove it and EVERYTHING. This band has taken over my life, I'm back on LJ, I'm editing my user info for the first time since I lived in Indiana (which, you know, TWO STATES AGO), and I'm making an ~intro/about me/friends only~ post. I refresh my friends page at least twice an hour and I have more plot ideas than I can count written down to start writing about. I'm lurking in the kinkmeme.

Basically, I have immersed myself wholly into fandom once again in ways that I haven't in QUITE some time and I am truly thrilled about this! Less thrilled about the fact that so many 1D fans seem like horrifying human beings, but I've seen a lot who seem like pretty solid people, too, and I'm excited to get to know people/write/generally try to be a really productive member of fandom again!

HERE GOOOOOES.

the quiet things

romasquerade — Fri, 18 May 2012 01:35:56 GMT

Title: The Quiet Things
Pairing: Liam/Zayn
Rating: G? PG?
Warning: RPF, uhh light angst, maybe?? Sorta?
Words: ~2900
Summary: Liam thinks he might understand why Zayn started smoking, but he can't for the life of him understand why he won't quit. In which Liam tries to figure out what makes Zayn smoke, and maybe falls a little in love in the process.
Disclaimer: Not real, not making any profit, etc etc.
A/N: Muchas gracias, or rather a huge, giant fuck you to Tumblr for ruining my life with these boys, and an actual serious thanks to mockturtletale for the beta job and for encouraging me to write again. ♥ always, dear.

The first thing Liam really notices about Zayn is that he smells like cigarettes. He's not sure why, if it's because someone in Zayn's family smokes or because he does, but he thinks it's disgusting, and while he isn't inclined to dislike anybody without really interacting with them first, he can't say Zayn's at the top of his list of people to get to know.

That changes, of course. A lot of things change in the next few weeks. Liam doesn't know when exactly, or how, but suddenly everything in his life is turned upside down and he's forced together with these four other guys that he knows nearly nothing about. He expects to be disappointed when it begins, feels like he wants this more than the rest of them, but it doesn't take long to realize that being put in a band with Niall, Harry, Louis and even Zayn is the best thing that could have ever happened to him.

They all get on Zayn’s case about smoking, but he refuses to quit. Liam thinks it's a little strange, maybe, because all-around it seems so outside of his personality to smoke and keep smoking. He thinks he might understand why Zayn started, but he can’t for the life of him understand why he won't quit.

"I just don't get it," he says one day, just him and Zayn in Zayn's flat, which reeks of smoke. Liam wishes he could still say he hates it.

"Hmm?" Zayn mumbles, blinking away from the television to glance up at Liam.

"Smoking isn't cool, it's bad for you, it wrecks your voice. I just don't get it."

Zayn closes his eyes and frowns lightly, like he's tired of these conversations.

"I don't do it because I think it's 'cool'," he says a little tersely.

"Then why?"

"I've got an addictive personality," Zayn says, looking back at the telly. "S'all there is to it."

Liam doesn't buy into the validity of that and says as much. "Then be addicted to something else. Lotsa people kick smoking habits in lieu of an addiction to like, chewing gum, or whatever."

At that, Zayn smirks -- or something close to it, as far as Liam can see from his profile, but he doesn't look amused. "I don't think think that'd work."

"But why?"

"Liam, mate, give it a rest. Don't worry about it so much, 'm fine."

Liam does worry about it, though, in the coming weeks. He doesn't believe that it reasons down to an addictive personality, and while he'd thought he understood why Zayn had started (at first because it was the socially acceptable thing to do at the time, and then because a habit's a habit and Zayn doesn't like to do things half-way), he's starting to think that maybe he doesn't get it at all.

Zayn doesn't smoke constantly. He doesn't buy a new pack every day and smoke them all in hour-long intervals; he doesn't light one after another in a constant succession of nicotine and ash. He doesn't do it every day, doesn't do it consistently at all. But sometimes he'll smoke half a pack in a single night, out in the alley of a club or on the back porch of his flat, rain or shine or snow or anything, and not pick up another for a month, and sometimes he'll smoke one cigarette every day for two weeks straight. Liam can't seem to figure out what makes it happen, can't really distinguish any common factors between the occasions, but not for lack of trying.

It's almost creepy how much attention he pays to Zayn these days, obsessing over every move to try and figure it out. And he doesn't understand why he's doing it, either, or is at least ignoring whatever reasoning his head's coming up with. He's being ridiculous, and he knows it, because it's Zayn's body and his life and his decision, and he's not really putting the band in jeopardy, so what's the big deal? Liam is almost ready to give up on trying to learn what makes Zayn tick when he thinks maybe he’s found a clue.

One night after a really great, high-energy show, Zayn pulls Liam backstage and into a hug so tight that Liam can feel the faintest of tremors rippling over Zayn's body. He pulls back and tilts his head in question, but Zayn just smiles so brightly at him that he's knocked off kilter for a second, and then the rest of the boys come tumbling in, all smiles and excitement, and Liam can't help but succumb to the infectious joy until he notices Zayn sneak off backstage, pulling the pack of cigarettes out of his bag on the way.

Liam doesn’t follow him, even though he wants to. Instead, he files away this tidbit of information and thinks about paying more attention next time.

Next time is a while later, after the tour is over. They’ve been home for a week, relaxing for the first time in what seems like forever, but already they’re all a little anxious, ready to get out and do something, no longer content to sit restlessly at home without much purpose.

It’s taking its toll on everybody differently. Liam’s picked up four or five different instruments and attempted to master them, only to put each one down after about a day. He’s itching to sing, to record, to perform -- anything, really, would be better than sitting around like this. So he calls the boys to his flat, orders some take-out, and sets up for a long movie marathon. They still get restless when they’re all together, but it’s better than it is apart, like all things are.

Halfway through the second movie, Zayn is pressed up close against Liam, all five of them smushed onto a three-person sofa. Liam feels more at ease than he has all week, this close to his best friends, but next to him Zayn is radiating pent-up energy like he’s never been outside in his life. It’s a few minutes later that Liam notices the faint trembling again, starting in Zayn’s chest and moving outward from there. Louis, on Zayn’s other side, doesn’t seem to notice, and for a while Liam thinks maybe he’s making it up. But near the end of the movie it gets worse, Liam can feel it shaking him, and even Louis is side-eying Zayn like he’s worried.

When the credits start to roll, Liam looks over at Zayn, who seems to have stopped trembling quite so much, but whose leg is now bouncing up and down against Liam’s own so quickly he almost doesn’t realize it.

“Zayn, you good, mate?” he asks quietly, some mix of not wanting the others to worry and not wanting them to know what he’s been trying to hard to figure out.

Zayn looks at him a little oddly before standing up. “‘M fine,” he mumbles, and then more loudly: “I’m gonna step outside for a minute, start the next movie without me.”

Liam almost thinks about following him, cornering him outside and making him explain himself, but it seems like too much and not enough. Zayn’s starting to worry him, but the thing is -- he doesn’t seem any different than he always has. He’s not acting differently, he’s had no change in demeanor, he’s not more or less excited about anything, not sleeping differently, it’s just that now Liam has this piece of information that he didn’t have before, and somehow that changes everything.

Zayn doesn’t come back until the end of the third movie.

Over the next few weeks, Liam sees Zayn smoking, but not very much. He doesn’t have the chance to get too close, to test his theory further, but something in his gut tells him that he’s really onto something here. He isn’t sure what this is though, because sure, now he knows that Zayn’s got this shaking thing going on, and whenever he starts shaking he goes to smoke, but there’s gotta be something beneath that, beyond it. Liam wants to know what makes Zayn so shaky, but he doesn’t know how to ask.

They’re at a club one night, drunk and having fun, when Zayn sneaks up behind Liam and starts dancing with him, grinning against the back of his neck. They’ve been like this, recently, in a way that’s been slowly building so quietly behind the scenes that Liam’s almost missed it, focused instead on figuring out what other things mean. But he pushes back into it tonight, reaching behind him to pull Zayn’s hands into his own and settle them on his hips. They dance like that for a while, Zayn’s head hooked over Liam’s shoulder, smiling at and into each other.

The song changes to something slow, and the alcohol really starts to hit Liam, things blurring at the edges (and lines blurring out almost entirely). He suddenly feels Zayn’s lips pressed up against his neck, his breath hot and damp, and he pushes his back up against Zayn’s torso, closer than he thinks they’ve ever been before. And Zayn’s mouth is moving up, behind Liam’s ear, and his fingers are holding on tightly to Liam’s, pressing sharp into his hips. Zayn flicks his tongue out and Liam shivers all over, a light gasp slipping out of his throat and into the air in front of him, nearly lost. There are people pressed against him from all directions on the crowded dance floor, but he isn’t aware of anyone but Zayn, of anything but the press of his body behind him, the exact spot behind his ear where Zayn’s tongue just was, where he wants it again.

Liam turns his head toward Zayn, tilts his head up to press a kiss to his forehead. But just as Zayn is lifting his own head up, some rational faculty deep inside of Liam kicks vaguely into gear and he realizes, suddenly, that they’re both incredibly drunk. And he wants this, he does, he’s not so far gone that he can’t recognize that he’d want this just as much sober as he does in this moment, but he doesn’t want it like this, something that would only be a half-memory in the morning, something that maybe Zayn wouldn’t want sober. He wants it more than he’d expected, he realizes in the instant that he pulls himself away from Zayn, too much to give it the possibility of being a one-time thing.

Liam spins around to find Zayn a step farther away than he’d been an instant ago, his face closed off and the smile that Liam had felt burned against his neck gone. Before Zayn has a chance to bolt, Liam reaches for him, hands around his waist to pull him closer.

“Zayn,” he says, a little too loudly, a little desperate. He doesn’t like the closed-off look on Zayn’s face but his head is too fuzzy to figure out how to fix it, so he just hugs Zayn close.

“Tomorrow,” he whispers, “we can talk about this tomorrow, I promise.” That seems to relax Zayn a little bit, if his body going pliant in Liam’s arms is any indication, and Liam sighs and takes a step back.

“I’m getting a drink,” Zayn shouts over the sound of the club, and Liam nods in acknowledgement. He reaches out to squeeze Zayn’s wrist as he leaves, and though he notices the faint tremor he doesn’t remember why it’s important.

Zayn walks away in entirely too straight a line for him to be as drunk as Liam thought he was.

They all go home much later, stopping for chinese food on the way, and by the time everyone heads off to bed, they’re all pretty sober and the sun is just about to rise. They all leave Niall’s flat to go back to their own, but when Liam gets into his, he notices Zayn sitting out in the back courtyard, cigarette in hand.

He almost thinks nothing of it, peeling off his tshirt and heading for the bathroom, but then he thinks about earlier that night, Zayn’s body pressed close to his, and suddenly he’s just tired. He’s tired of not understanding what’s going on with his best friend, of not knowing how he feels, he’s tired of the dance they’ve been doing.

So he pads outside, the night-cool air of a too-early summer morning a blessing against the heat of his skin. He sits down next to Zayn and they’re silent for a while, only the sound of their breathing between them while Zayn takes drags of the cigarette until he flicks it to the ground and puts it out with his flip flop.

“I still don’t get it, Malik,” Liam sighs, resting his head on Zayn’s shoulder. They’re both quiet for a long time after that, and Liam thinks for moment that maybe they’ll fall asleep this way, sitting up against each other on the back porch of an apartment complex just before 6am in the middle of July.

But then Zayn speaks. “Sometimes,” he says, and it’s so soft that Liam almost doesn’t catch it. He pauses for a long time again. “Sometimes I get this feeling, Li, like I’m too big for my skin. Like all my insides are gonna burst. It feels like... Like every time I breathe in, I’m expanding inside, but my skin won’t stretch enough around it.”

Liam reaches an arm out to grab a hold of Zayn’s hand, laces their fingers together between them.

“It used t’be that I could just go outside and it’d all seep out of me and into the universe or something, but eventually that stopped working. And I couldn’t... It’s such a terrible feeling, I just feel trapped.”

Liam’s thumb runs up and down Zayn’s hand.

“I tried lots of different things, and believe it or not, smoking’s the healthiest.”

Something about that makes Liam’s throat clench, and he scoots closer until their thighs are pressed together.

“But you don’t only smoke when you’re upset,” Liam says softly, thinking about times after shows, giant grins lighting up Zayn’s face before he walks out to the alley outside.

“No. It’s anything. Usually they’re big things, like being really happy or really sad or something, but sometimes it’s just being restless or confused or excited or amused. Sometimes it isn’t anything at all, except a thrum starting just below my ribs and spreading outwards.”

They’re quiet again, then, pressed close together, the sun almost entirely over the horizon now.

“Then what was it in the club, earlier?” Liam’s almost afraid to ask, mumbling it against Zayn’s shoulder, heart thumping a little in his chest. Now that he’s got one mystery solved, all of his attention has focused on the other, and he’s remembering hugs and smiles shared especially with each other, watching movies almost in each other’s laps, dancing so close in clubs. He’s been ignoring it, but he wants it, and he’s not at all as surprised as he thinks he should be to discover that this fascination with Zayn’s smoking habits has been nothing more than a disguise to cover up his real interest in Zayn.

“Thought you didn’t wanna talk about it ‘til tomorrow,” Zayn says, but Liam thinks he’s smiling.

“I’d say it’s probably tomorrow by now.”

“Mm.”

Zayn is smiling, Liam looks up to see, but he doesn’t say anything else. And maybe it isn’t Zayn’s turn to talk, anyway, maybe Liam has some explaining to do.

So he says, “I didn’t mean to imply ‘no’,” and Zayn stays quiet.

“I didn’t wanna be drunk. I wanted to remember our--” he cuts himself off, blushing. After a moment: “If we were gonna have a first kiss, I wanted to remember it exactly. I wouldn’t want it to be a one-time thing.”

Liam’s looking out at the sky, but Zayn bumps their shoulders together until Liam turns to look at him. Zayn’s smiling a little, not beaming, but it almost feels more genuine this way, soft around the edges. Liam can’t help but smile back.

“I don’t think I could only kiss you once if I tried, Li,” Zayn says, leaning his forehead up against Liam’s.

Liam is still blushing horribly, but his smile’s growing wider by the second, even as he feels exhaustion crashing over him like a wave. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” And then they’re kissing, and Liam isn’t sure if he pressed forward first or if Zayn did, but he is sure that it doesn’t matter.

Zayn pulls back to yawn, and Liam can’t help but huff out a laugh.

“We should go to bed,” he says against Zayn’s lips.

“Probably. You’re too sensible, Payne,” but he’s smiling back against Liam, and Liam thinks about all the days they have in the future for this, for them.

He stands up slowly, stretching his arms out above his head before reaching them down to help Zayn up. They hold hands back into the apartment complex, and when they let go to head back to their own places, Liam realizes that Zayn isn’t trembling, at least not now.

romasquerade — Fri, 18 May 2012 01:27:33 GMT

HAHAH y'all wanna hear a funny joke?

I've been interested in this fandom for a week and I've already written and finished my first 1D piece. To many, this is not an impressive feat -- but this is the first thing I have written in two years. The last serious thing I wrote was my BBB in 2009.

Let's think about that for a second. It's been two years since I've even vaguely dabbled in writing fiction, and three since I've actually finished something, even though I've been thoroughly invested in two or three fandoms since, and now five dumbass boys bumble into my life and I'm already planning the sequel.

I'm losing control of my life, y'all. It's a good thing classes are done in three weeks, I suspect that's as long as I'll be able to even feign some semblance of motivation for anything that isn't this stupid fucking band.

That said, I'm gonna be posting this thing in a minute, so you can look out for that.

romasquerade — Fri, 04 May 2012 01:30:20 GMT

Hello LJ! I return to you for the first time since August to announce that I have fallen head over heels for One Direction. It's bad. I haven't felt this way since I first found my way to Bandom, alas. Has anyone any kind of primers or recs or photos or anything of them that they'd like to share??? Throw me a bone, y'all, I'm drowning here.

romasquerade — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 06:01:32 GMT

Is there a reason that Delicious hasn't shown me any new Arthur/Eames bookmarks since Thursday? Is my computer lying to me? Is the internet lying to me? Is it actually that no one has posted a new bookmark since Thursday? I am dying here, internet. NEED MOAR FIC. Ugh. Is something going on that I don't know about? Are we on strike?

I really just want to read more fic.

really, LJ?

romasquerade — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 03:50:44 GMT

okay livejournal, I'm going to need you to get your shit together like... yesterday, bro. I have actually READ and witnessed these posts on communities that you're telling me don't exist. I have posted some of them! They exist, I promise you! Any time you want to get with the program and decide to show them again, that would be great.

In other news, the Suits fandom has taken over my soul thanks to mockturtletale like always, which has maybe brought me back to lj? of course, now that I've said that, I'll be adios-ing again. We'll see!