lettered: (Default)
Okay so I wrote this fic. It was really hard, because it was more plotty than most things I write. I'm pretty happy with the result, but I kind of wonder whether it was off-putting to some. Lots of people hate my summaries, so I tried a different kind of summary with this one. I feel like it just made the story look boring, so I have now changed it to a summary that makes me want to click on the fic, instead of trying to write the summary I thought other people wanted. I never really know what to do with summaries, so I figure I should have just tried to make myself happy!

Anyway, this story was stressful but I'm really happy with it, and thanks to [livejournal.com profile] kedavranox for her original story and [livejournal.com profile] icmezzo for all her help!

Author/Artist: lettered
Title: The Fall of the Veils
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Warnings/Content: Draco is asexual. Harry has a noncanonical power. A lot of minor character deaths occur in the backstory. There are OCs.
Summary: Muggles find out about wizards. This makes Harry feel bad. Draco doesn't love Harry back. This makes Harry feel sad. Then there's conspiracy and intrigue and working together and Legilimency and murder and adventure and suspicion and magical things, and all of this makes Harry feel mad. So this fic is about Harry feeling all the feelings, and then everyone else feels feelings too. Even Draco. (Remix of “Ellhorn,” by [livejournal.com profile] kedavranox.)
Word Count: ~62,000
Disclaimer: Characters from the Harry Potter series belong to JK Rowling. An important part of this story is based on “Ellhorn,” by [livejournal.com profile] kedavranox. In some ways this story is also a remix of Mercedes Lackey’s novel, Arrow’s Flight.
Author's notes: [livejournal.com profile] kedavranox, I don’t think this is what you meant by a remix of what happens before your fic! But as I thought about your wonderful story “Ellhorn” more and more, I focused on the line about Harry’s mind and who his captors were. The story spun out (of control!) from there, managing to pull together several ideas I’d always wanted to write. I’m sorry that the background for your short story turned into such a long piece, but thank you for letting me imagine a world behind your fic.

An impossible amount of gratitude to [livejournal.com profile] icmezzo for listening to my idea, encouraging me, and beta’ing. And inspiring a scene and giving me ideas! I’m really glad I met you. I can’t even begin to describe what all your help means to me.

The Fall of the Veils

Cap 2

Apr. 4th, 2014 01:51 am
lettered: (Default)
I can't even deal with this movie. Seriously I can't even. I can nothing. I have no can.

Please tell me all your thoughts. Spoilers in the comments (hopefully!). Please come talk to meeeeeeeeeeeeee.
lettered: (Default)
Guys so I have this problem. I'm super excited about The Winter Soldier. And the problem is that my hopes are so high by my expectations are quite low. I really just want Steve and Natasha to be forever-bros; is it too much to ask; I guess it is, but it's all I want. And he tries to be all nice to her but she just looks at him a lot and tightens her mouth and doesn't say anything. And he guesses it's because she's Russian or something but he does stuff like invite her out for coffee and the thing is she says yes. He tries to make conversation but she doesn't say much, but she does drink all of her coffee, and kind of licks the rim a bit. And then he just wants to feed her and give her warm places to sleep, but he knew if he said that to her she'd look at him like he was crazy and he guesses he's just old-fashioned. And then the coffee shop is attacked and she knocks over the table to get behind it as a shield, but then when she sees her opening she steps on the edge of the table and then onto Steve's back because he's already bending over so she can use him as a stepping stool to jump on these guys and she tackles them. And when Steve and Natasha are done Steve gives her a hand up and then he says, "You have some . . ." and points at the corner of his mouth and she wipes the blood away with the back of her hand.

And then Steve pays for the coffee.

That's really all I want; is it too much to ask?
lettered: (Default)
A while ago I decided we should do something with our bar. Like maybe mod podge it with a bunch of comics. And then [personal profile] my_daroga said that it should be the Avengers room. So we decided the dining tables should have four different chairs, and that each chair should represent an Avenger. Then [personal profile] my_daroga pointed out we have two bar stools who could be Hawkeye and Black Widow. Then I pointed out that the dining table should obviously have the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo. This story might only be based on a true story. It could be that all the things I said I thought up were thought up by [personal profile] my_daroga and all the things I said [personal profile] my_daroga thought up were thought up by me. Who actually knows at this point.

So we went to Good Will and bought four distinct chairs that we felt represented Avengers. They needed some work, which we thought would be a fun, cool project. Periodically we looked at them and talked about what we should do with them. And then we'd look at them some more and talk about it some more. Every once in a while [personal profile] my_daroga would say, "So . . . when do you wanna work on those chairs?" And I'd say, ". . . Some other time."

Meet my mom, the craziest mom on the planet. Guys, my mom is a famous artist whose ceramics show at a bunch of fancy galliers and the Houston Intercontinental Airport and win thousands of dollars all the time and stuff. But the thing about my mom is that everything she makes could win awards. She's a fabulous painter, cook, seamstress, carpenter, handyman, and . . . everything. I mean, she'll do things like decide the island in the kitchen needs a new top. So she'll make the tiles. Then she'll tile it. Then she'll soak the wood to bend it around the rim and affix the wood and finish the wood. She'll take about three days, but only because it took three days with the wood tied to the dock to get it bendy enough. So anyway she's kind of nuts.

Mom gets here for her 10 day visit (she lives in Houston so I only see her a couple times a year) and says, "Well, this Avenger chair project is going nowhere fast. Let's see if I can help." So she helps [personal profile] my_daroga and I with the Avengers chairs. We're still not done with the table, bar, and stools, but we did do this:

Avengers chairs. )
lettered: (Default)
I am the co-creator, co-producer, and director for Hello Earth, a theater company which has produced Outdoor Trek three years running. Outdoor Trek is a live theatrical adaptation of an Original Series episode of Star Trek performed in Seattle's Blanche Lavizzo Park, and auditions for the episode "Mirror, Mirror" are tonight and Tuesday. Please help me by spreading the word to anyone in the Seattle area who likes Star Trek, theater, or having fun. Even if you aren't in Seattle, if you have friends on Facebook or other social media outlets, you can help by spreading the word. Below is further information if you want to get involved in this fan-run project:

Auditions tonight (Sunday, March 16, 2014) and Tuesday (March 18, 2014) from 6:00pm to 9:00pm, at Theatre Puget Sound, in the Armory/Center House on the 4th floor in Seattle Center, Studio C (Sunday, March 16th) and Studio I (Tuesday, March 18th).

Needed: Actors to fill all roles (except Kirk, Spock and McCoy), which will be cast without regard to the gender or race (or ability, size, age, etc) of the original series characters. We are not looking for impersonation. We are looking for creative people who want to be part of the process both on and off stage.

Auditions will consist of cold readings. Please be prepared to stay for the entire time; we may not need you for that long but we will be holding callbacks after hearing everyone.

Performances will take place at the end of July and beginning of August outside at Blanche Lavizzo Park.

Kirk and Spock
lettered: (Default)
The plan was never to keep the same journal title. [profile] kita0610 was my inspiration; she used to change hers fairly frequently. It was such a delight to get comments from 'psychotic glitter display' and 'the Accidental Puffin' or whatever. But I haven't changed mine in a while now. This is a long story.

This explanation is lion turtles all the way down. )

Updates

Feb. 17th, 2014 10:49 pm
lettered: (Default)
»Made a lot of headway on my fic. FEELS GOOD.

»Thank you to everyone who told me their Tumblr name or who friended me on Tumblr. It feels awesome, except a whole bunch of people friended me and I don't know who they are. WHO ARE YOU? WHO WHO?

»Still appalled by Outlander. However, am interested in the tv show, because Ron D Moore.

»I keep waiting to hear something awful about Moore, or see something awful he's done. I mean the big names that you know--Moffat, JJ Abrams--I just kind of picture them sitting in a room saying, "Okay, but how can we start with something cool and then fuck it up even more?" Even Joss Whedon, whom I really respect a lot, has made some serious mistakes that just make me wince super hard and say, "Ooh, buddy, I know you mean well, but really can you watch where you step?" I haven't seen Moore doing this, but . . . he has to, right? I mean I don't like anyone anymore; that's just how I am now--broken inside.

»Played Apples to Apples as Data. Was very eager to define for Lwaxana Troi and B'elanna and sometimes Jim Kirk all the 20th and 21th references. Had some trouble since the only teenager he knows is Wesley Crusher (he chose "High School Bathrooms" for the category "Neat").
lettered: (Default)
So, I made a Tumblr ages ago because I knew it was the new thing, but I've rarely used it. Still, I find that when I'm sad that there aren't more updates on my flist, I go to my Tumblr to see what's up. This is hilarious since I have about three people friended there.

I'm letteredlettered on Tumblr. What's your user name? Let's be buddies.

Outlander

Feb. 13th, 2014 02:44 pm
lettered: (Default)
I had four different friends from four very different corners of my little world telling me Outlander is one of their favorite books. This was what persuaded me to read it, even though the premise is not my cuppa. The premise was described to me as, "Married nurse goes back in time to 1700s Scotland. Meets some hot guy. Has adventures." All of this actually did sound like my cuppa, except for the implied adultery. Two out of four of these people said, "Weeeeeeeeeeeelll, but she kind of made the adultery okay."

Usually when I hear recommendations from a bunch of different people it's still from the same corner. It's fandom, or people at work, or people I knew back in Texas, or it's young people, or it's the media. It was strange to hear so many different people have such intense love for this book, so I decided to try it. I had to stop after the first three chapters. It was intensely boring.

But then another friend I had got super into it, so I started reading again. And then I got pretty interested when I heard Ron D Moore was doing the show. I love DS-9 and BSG, so this is fairly excited me.

Now I'm about halfway through this book, and I feel like I'm going to throw up. I wanted to know if other people felt the way that I do about it, so I looked at Goodreads and accidentally spoiled myself for the rest. I'm going to trudge on through, because I promised my friend I would, but seriously? I don't just find this book bad; I find it upsetting. It's like some unholy combination of Song of Ice and Fire (which I think is awful) and 50 Shades (which I don't think is awful, but I haven't bothered to read it. What I do know is that it seems to have a lot of S&M which isn't handled as nearly as carefully and deftly as half the fics in fandom).

But seriously, I want to know--am I just a hater, or is this book really as extremely homophobic and misogynist as it's coming off to me? Inquiring minds, guys.
lettered: (Default)
I haven't actually used broadcast television in over six years. But anyway, I'm at a hotel, and I thought I'd watch the Olympics since am too tired to really do anything else. Colleague says she's getting NBC on channel 41 in her room. I'm in the same hotel, but channel 41 is solid baseball. Channel 33 is NBC and is covering the Olympics, but the reception is horrible. I've stopped to watch most of the other channels to see if they're this bad, and they're just fine. This is the only channel continually cutting out, and NBC is definitely on a different channel in my colleague's room.

How does this work, exactly? Would some rooms be on satellite and some not? Idk if this is stupid, but I honestly don't understand. Also, you can't use the remote control to press 3-3. It will only register one number at a time. This is dumb but seems like it must be completely unrelated to the same-network-on-different-channels and horrible reception.

In other news I had dinner with [livejournal.com profile] seraphcelene who is a really amazing person. Comes highly recommended as a fandom and real life friend.
lettered: (Default)
A while ago I read All This And Love by J. Libby, a collection of self-published short stories.

I feel the need to start this review by confessing that J. Libby is a friend of mine. I don’t often read short stories, so I might never have found this book if not for our friendship. That said, hopefully this review inspires more people to read All This and Love than may otherwise have done so.

One of the reasons I don’t often read short stories is that it takes me a while to enter a world, but when I do I enter it fully. By the time I’m done with a really good short story, I just want more. To some extent, the stories in All This and Love have this quality, but on the whole the stories worked better for me than most short stories do.

The stories in All This and Love fall into two categories. The first category is stories with language so rich and dense that I feel like the point is the language itself, the feeling and themes that thrum through the words. When I read a poem, I rarely get upset that it’s over, not because I don’t like poems but rather because poems are less like stories and more like thoughts or ideas. They’re wisps of worlds, like dreams, and the point is that you can never enter them, they’re like dreams. 'like the girls in the movies' and 'fallen: a love story' read like poems to me—I don’t really want more or less. I just want that beautiful thing to exist in the world. Even though it’s the shortest, like the girls in the movies is probably my favorite story of the book. It reads just like prose poetry.

My favorite thing about Libby as a writer has always been her use of language and way with words. Even though the other stories are less like poems, they still resonate like poetry in some ways, especially this, too, like water and memory. That story, as well as the two remaining stories ('to the water and the wild', 'all of this and love') are more “stories” in the traditional sense of the word, with a bit more to latch on to in terms of plot and character. What worked for me in these stories, however, was the world-building. I finally understood that the point of a short story is to enter the world, whereas the point of a novel isn’t so much entering the world as traveling in the world. At any rate, these stories felt like doorways—peeks into other universes. Although I did want more, I found the glimpses interesting.

Libby’s other strength is theme. These stories are thematically linked by love, fantasy, and horror. I particularly enjoyed the horror aspect, even though I’m not a horror fan. There is traditional horror—one story has zombies, another werewolves—but what I enjoyed most was the gradual creep factor, the building sense of wrong Libby manages to create as several of these stories build toward climax.

Although I helped edit many of these stories myself, this book could still have used another good solid edit. And while I enjoyed these stories as they are, I still wish I knew more about some of these worlds and characters. However, on the whole, I'm glad I read this book because I enjoyed it. Above and beyond everything else, reading this language is like eating rich chocolate.

A-

Do recommend.
lettered: (Default)
I hate everything. I'm upset by everything. I'm a terrible friend and an awful supervisor and a miserable everything. Everything is horrible and everything hurts. This'll be over in approximately twelve hours, guys. Hold onto your butts.*

Except writing. I still like that. And I like comments on my writing. I like the good ones, but I also like finding the bad ones. I've rarely if ever received negative comments directly to a fic I've written, and if I do usually that person says something nice, too. These aren't bad, but then there are the hidden bad ones. The hidden ones that possibly no one expects you to see because they don't know how you hunger and ache for the bad ones.

I should qualify that in my experience the hidden bad ones aren't really so bad either. Generally the bad ones are sort of nice! Because usually if someone bookmarks your fic, it's because they like it, no matter how blunt they're self-written description of your fic is. And I've had fics mentioned on anon memes, but usually if it gets mentioned and people are discussing it you at least know people are reading your fic and think it's worth talking about, which is flattering.

Constructive criticism )

*Jurassic Park isn't horrible.

I suck

Dec. 22nd, 2013 10:09 pm
lettered: (Default)
Apparently I no-show defaulted on Yuletide. I thought the deadline was the 23rd. I'd started a story but was unable to finish, so I was going to finish something else by tomorrow. Wow, I'm really doing everything on Earth wrong lately.

I feel so so bad for my requester; they were really nice.

Update

Oct. 27th, 2013 04:33 pm
lettered: (Default)
I'm back from Washington DC. I went to meetings in the National Geographic headquarters! Then I sight-saw in D.C. and mostly thought about Steve Rogers. I wrote so much Steve/Bruce in my head you guys you have no idea. Also I went to Arlington and thought about the Ken Burns documentary a lot.

Thank you for the sympathy about our dog. I don't know why it feels so nice to get sympathy from other people, but it does.

Sad

Oct. 22nd, 2013 11:46 pm
lettered: (Default)
We had to put our dog to sleep yesterday.

Geek Girl Con was this weekend and as much as I liked seeing all the people and doing all the things, it was really colored by our doggy. I think Housemate and I did pretty well in front of people, and the con helped to distract us, but mostly all I care about is my dingo-train.

We're laying off everyone at work and rehiring back a fraction of the staff, this has been going on for months, I got a promotion so now I have to be one of the ones making the hiring decisions, I have a trip to D.C. for work and I worked over 13 hours today, but mostly all I care about is my dog.

I think it was the right thing to do because she was really unwell and had been refusing to eat for weeks, and didn't eat at all the past three days. But she was really special to me, and we were petting her when she died, and she was my favorite of them all even though she also drove me the craziest.

Housemate did almost all of the work getting her to eat and cleaning up after her and taking care of her so I probably shouldn't even complain. I think the other dog is coping okay and one of the worst things is how I don't cry or sound sad when I talk about it.

Anyway so that's that.
lettered: (Default)
Dear Yuletide Person,

I've never done Yuletide. I'm still not sure I really get how it works. The first thing you need to understand is that I'll be happy about anything you write. So little work exists in these fandoms that it's a joy to read anything about them. I love het, slash, femslash, USTy gen, gen gen, hardcore PWPs, softcore PWPs, UST, long romances with fade-to-blacks, did I mention gen, adventure, horror, action, missing scenes, sequels, prequels, AUs, long fic, short fic, in-between fic, drabbles, nonlinear fic, linear fic, experimental fic and just fic in general.

The only things I tend not to appreciate in fic are adultery and non-con. Infidelity is okay if the couple is not married; dub-con is okay. I don't get why I make these distinctions either.

I love meta and historical accuracy, but they aren't necessary. I really like dialogue, social commentary, philosophy, and people working together.

Here be fandom-specific. )

Gravity

Oct. 13th, 2013 10:26 am
lettered: (Default)
Everyone is right about this movie. You should go see it.

Thoughts. )

Fringe

Oct. 6th, 2013 11:02 pm
lettered: (Default)
So flist, you who know all, what were/are your thoughts on the tv show Fringe? I'd especially like to know these thoughts in conjunction with your thoughts on either Alias, Lost or both.

A bunch of people say that Fringe was really good, but my thought is that these people also thought Lost was good, and yet the hype and obsession around Fringe never reached the level that it seemed to be around Lost.

For the record, I don't hate Lost . . . yeah, no, wait, I kind of do hate Lost. I only watched one season of it, so hating it is perhaps not fair, but it reminded me so much of Alias that the investment didn't seem worth it.

I also don't hate--oh, who am I fooling, I really do dislike Alias, but in a different way, because I gave Alias all of the chances. I knew it was silly and stupid insofar as realism, but I was in love with Victor Garber's character and his relationship with Jennifer Garner's character, and I was deeply interested in the slowly unfolding overarching sci fi plot.

After watching two and a half seasons I began to realize that there were a bunch of great ideas in the show but poor execution and even poorer follow-through. The characters never grew beyond their complicated, nuanced premise; the plot was a series of cheap tricks employed to keep you on the edge of your seat without ever delivering the narrative satisfaction that justifies such suspense--there was no overarching narrative, despite textual insistence that there would be.

I had to give up on Alias after four seasons, which was a great big waste of time to me. After the first season of Lost, I realized that the same thing was happening there, only on a larger scale. Worse, there was no Victor Garber. From what I've heard from other viewers, it's probably a good thing I gave it up.

So, having now experienced my vitriol aimed in Abrams' general direction--would I like Fringe?
lettered: (Default)
Does anyone have any recs for vids about Loki? Or know where I can find recs for vids about Loki?

I'm only interested in vids, not fic.

I don't really want silly or humorous ones, or ones that are only romantic. Really I want ones about Loki being destructive, cruel, dangerous, sexy, powerful, pathetic, jealous, sympathetic, unsympathetic, monstrous, pitiful, sarcastic, elegant, classy, snarky, articulate, abused, creepy, incestuous, violent, hateful, insane, vengeful and/or angry. If you have any ideas, please help!

If you want to know why, it's kind of a long and convoluted story. )

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It's Lion Turtles all the way down

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