forget your Unified Theory of Everything

A few months ago my_daroga helped me bleach my hair, then dye it blue. I really wanted to dye it dark green--the color of Elphaba's skin, basically--but I couldn't find that color, so I dyed it blue. I used Manic Panic, which quickly faded to lavendar/pink/red/other, so my_daroga helped me do a turquoise on top of that. As she was dyeing it, our friend Hats points out that it looked awesome half-turquoise and half pink/red/other, so my_daroga left it like that, and for a while it was this really cool rainbow effect that looked a lot like what I imagine mermaid-hair to look like.

But anyway, for a while I've been just kind of bored/fed up/unhappy with my hair. For a while it was looking like Julia Ormond Sabrina, which is pretty much my ideal hair, but then I got a hair cut and it didn't look like that anymore. I don't actually care that much about my appearance, so I thought if I just shaved my head I could get rid of all the color and the hair cut and start over, and it would be interesting to see what I looked like with no hair.

I should amend my statement and explain that I care very much about my appearance, but only when I am reminded of it, which is rarely. Most of the time I truly do find it hard to remember that I have a body, a corporeal self, with corporeal surroundings. I really do believe that I'm the most abstract person I have ever had the opportunity to encounter, which is definitely romantic and interesting but also terribly inconvenient and kind of stupid. It's important to notice the real world and deal with it, but I am not really that interested in it. I know that I should be. I want to be. I want to be beautiful, and part of being actually beautiful is taking the time to iron your clothes and exercise and eat right and comb your hair and wear flattering clothes and shop for flattering clothes and do your laundry, but it exhausts me. I'm exhausted. Dishes and laundry and shopping and cooking and eating and dating and walking and sometimes interacting are often terribly boring to me, which is an extremely difficult and not very sensical way to live.

( wow, this went on way longer than I thought it would! It's about my hair and appearance and gender and idek )

So I just went and saw Yojimbo again, which is not a very similar experience to rewatching Lawrence of Arabia. For some reason I'd remembered Yojimbo having quite a bit of social commentary. It does have some--it's Kurosawa--but mostly it's about a badass with a sword. A really hot badass with a sword.

It's also hilarious and superbly done. There are so many action movies today about badasses who walk around being badasses, and yet imo none of them approach this movie in quality. my_daroga mentioned that it's over the top but also takes itself seriously; it's funny but it's not a parody. I feel like one of my very favorite things in fiction is ridiculous concepts treated with realism and self-awareness; when SPN jumps the shark it calls the episode 'Jumping the Shark' and then it does a freakin' amazing job with it.

Did I mention he's really hot? Toshiro Mifune is like the hottest man dead.



( my_daroga told me she posted Toshiro Mifune gifs but I don't know where so here you go. )

ETA: Also, I gotta just say that reading about Mifune's and Kurosawa's relationship on Wikipedia made me cry. I wish they could've stayed friends and worked together forever.

I liked Sleepy Hollow enough that I was already thinking how nice it would be if fandom fell for a show that so far has half a brain and a tough central lady, and what fic could I write as an early adopter? And I thought if I wrote any fic, it'd probably be a list of things that Ichabod needs to know about now. But lo, as I should have suspected, someone has already written it. It's not as much 'needs to know' as 'recently learned'. It's quite delightful, very well done, and it is by holli, whom I am beginning to suspect might have a thing for people displaced in time.

Ten Clicks, Sleepy Hollow gen, go read.

I actually watched this episode on Monday, but haven't had time to write about it. On Tuesday, my_daroga and I visited snickfic, who I rec just in general, as a livejournal friend but also real life buddy. We talked about SPN a lot, which made me miss that show. To write this reaction, I sort of skimmed the episode again. I didn't want to leave anything out!

( Hidden Truths episode reactions. No spoilers, please! )

I don't get this show. I have questions! You, like Radio Shack, have answers. ( Things I don't get about Teen Wolf )

So, Outdoor Trek just finished up. This was the episode of Star Trek that my co-producer and I adapted for live outdoor theater. This would be why I haven't been around much--producing and directing takes a LOT of time! Luckily, it was a big success. We made our money back, and almost 800 people attended.

Here's our Facebook.

I'm tired, but happy.

So, a while ago now, I hosted the Same Name Comment Fic Meme. The concept was this: prompt two characters from any two canons that have at least one name in common. I still find my banner hilarious; it included Wesley Crusher/Wesley Wyndham-Price; Scorpius Malfoy/Scorpius from Farscape; Dean Winchester/Dean from Gilmore Girls; Buffy Summers/Cyclops from X-Men, and the tag line was about Wolverine/Logan Echolls from Veronica Mars.

The meme was sorta kinda a success--it got a lot of prompts. And a total of two fills. I think it was way more fun to come up with prompts than to actually fill them.

I have ideas for two other fic-a-thons and/or memes that also seem like they would be more fun to prompt for than write for: a same actor meme and a doubles meme, for canons with two versions of the same character. (Well, I have other, less similar ideas. Same family meme! Genderswap meme! Missing mother meme!)

Anyways, the point is, in some comment fic memes, I just leave a prompt because I'd love to see some the fic that may result. But in others, I leave prompts because it's fun to think of prompts on a certain theme. The problem with this is that it can be kind of annoying to the people who want prompts to be filled and fills to be read and commented upon, which is completely understandable.

Then rthstewart hosted the Three Sentence Fic-A-Thon (which is apparently a yearly thing? idk), which is awesome and lovely. The great thing about this meme was that you could leave prompts for esoteric things, tiny fandoms, rare pairs, and still get fills. I'm probably never going to sit down and write a fic about James Bond, but I'll definitely write three sentences! So I felt very free to have fun with coming up with prompts, without feeling like I was being annoying by having just as fun prompting as I was reading fills and leaving fills. It was easy to do all three, without taking a huge chunk of time.

So anyway, now I'm think about the feasibility of hosting some of these memes/fic-a-thons, but adding suggested length-limits for fills: 100 words, three sentences, or similar. Like the Three Sentence Fic-A-Thon, people could post longer fills, but the idea is you're not really obligated to write a "complete" story. It might be fun to have a comm that's just dedicated to flash fic comment fests on certain themes--like every month or two there's a new fic-a-thon on a different theme, maybe with different suggestions for types of fills (haiku! Limmericks! Drabbles! Three sentences! etc) I don't know whether anyone would be interested in this . . .