dazzleberry

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

( Tweets )

...and manages to nearly impersonate himself.

I dropped Max off at a friend's house this afternoon. On the way home, I had to wait for about five minutes. For twelve turkeys to cross the road. Yes, that's right. Turkeys.

This is a residential, suburban area. There is a state park nearby, but these turkeys were going from one residential yard to another, where they were stopping to eat. I don't think they live there.

*is cranky*

Even with yesterday off, my sleep schedule is all fucked up. I slept yesterday from 9am until 2pm. Stayed awake until 4am knowing I had to work third shift tonight again, and was back up at 9am. I tried to take a nap today, but to no avail. And the next two days, my schedule is hellacious - I work 1030pm to 9am, then 1130am to 230pm. Followed by the same thing Saturday night/ Sunday morning, with Monday off to recuperated.

So, if I've emailed you, responded to a post, or even just ignored you - I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just off this week. Actually, this whole month will be this fucked - I'm bouncing back and forth between 3rd and 2nd shift with a few first shift hours thrown into my third shift weekend every weekend.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

( Tweets )

Monday night, I was back in the saddle. I'll be honest... it was more work than fun. Private lessons aren't my cup of tea, in the same way that shows aren't. I have a hard time being analyzed all the time. It feels like I'm being nitpicked for an hour, and it's exhausting. But this is what the area has, so I will be satisfied.

It wasn't a bad experience, but it was hard. Lots of concepts I know well but have a hard time implementing, especially when I'm being watched. So it will come, slowly.

Took a day off from the gym on Tuesday, which made sense at the time, but was probably a poor choice. Yesterday I was in a ton of pain, and I bet it would have been better if I'd kept moving the night before. So I was back to the gym - briefly - last night, and tonight, I hit my new goal of 25min on the elliptical. Yay for that!

Work has been tiring and a little rough, but shit happens. Keep marching.

And tomorrow, I have a not-date with an old friend from high school. My friends tell me it's a date. I don't think it is. I guess I'll find out! Either way, I think it'll be a good time.

So very glad it's almost Friday!

Though I am always a little reluctant to read interpretations of characters I am writing myself - it is so easy to get influenced, especially by good writers - I have read a number of Arthurian stories these last few months, just to get my hand (head?) in again. It has been fun. Most of the time, at least *g*. I thought I would write a few short reviews, by way of keeping a record of my Arthurian reading. Of course I will be paying special attention to how Gawain is treated.

Here is review number one:


Idylls of the Queen (1982)
Phyllis Ann Karr

“When Patrise put his head down on the table beside me and started groaning and twitching, my first thought was: and they call me the churl of this court.”

That is how Sir Kay starts his tale. Queen Guinevere hosts a dinner party at which one of the guests is murdered with a poisoned apple. The kinsmen of Sir Patrise, the unfortunate victim, accuse the Queen herself of the crime. The lady will be burnt at the stake unless someone proves her innocence by vanquishing Patrise’s kin in a joust. Alas! Sir Lancelot, the Queen’s champion, is away from court! And Sir Kay, the one knight who is free - and willing - to take up her cause, happens to be better at using his wits than at using weapons. So he sets out to unmask the killer by looking for someone with a motive and an opportunity to poison the bowl of fruit.

Idylls of the Queen is a kind of Arthurian detective novel, with the unlikely duo of Sir Kay the Seneschal and Sir Mordred as his sidekick setting off to discover the why and wherefore of the poisoning of Sir Patrise of Ireland. If you have read Malory and/or books based on him, the murder mystery is not especially exciting. The murder of Sir Patrise is an incident in the Morte d’Arthur, and Karr does not deviate from the murderer and motive as revealed there. The exciting part of her book is that she uses the poisoning as a starting-point for an exploration of the Arthurian court, its intrigues and main actors.

As Kay and Mordred, two outsiders, go around questioning knights and ladies, they uncover rather more unsavoury histories than they would have liked - all of them Malory’s, but now seen through the eyes of Phyllis Ann Karr. Karr’s own interpretation and the way in which it twists Malory’s plot (and several conventions of medieval romances) will not perhaps strike those who are unfamiliar with the Morte. But for them, too, the interaction between Kay and Mordred, each with their own reasons for wanting to track down the murderer, is reason enough to read Idylls of the Queen. Malory adepts, however, should consider themselves warned: Karr’s book does not share the Morte’s sympathies. Malory’s favourite knights do not come out looking good, and those Malory does not show in a positive light are the heroes of Idylls of the Queen.

Which brings us to…

Which Gawain?

Name:
Sir Gawaine of Orkney

Looks:
Handsome, broad-shouldered and blond, with an unscathed face despite his having fought many a battle. In his forties and slowly going white.

Presence:
Low. Kay and Mordred send him off to find Lancelot. There is a lot of talk about him, though.

Character:
Absolutely sweet, in a knightly sort of way. Kay reflects that it looks as though Queen Morgause and King Lot spent all the virtues they had to give on their firstborn son, so that unfortunately there weren’t any left for the other three.
Basically, Karr’s Gawain is the opposite of Malory’s. He is very courteous, patient, protective, honourable, honest, modest, unassuming, decent - well, see Kay’s comment about the virtues. In this novel, we get a pre-Malory Gawain in a Malory setting. A particularly delicious characterization of Gawain comes from Mordred: he says his elder brother “believes in Heaven, but not in Hell”.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Title: Office Boy
Author: snegurochka_lee
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~2,500
Warnings: EWE, probably. Also, see theme.
Summary: Harry watched the single bead of sweat slide down the side of Malfoy's face, slipping behind his ear and disappearing into his hair, and Harry's body gave a shiver at the thought of what was causing Malfoy's tension.
Notes: Written for the November theme of 'nipple clamps' at daily_deviant. Also, this is for marguerite_26, who was the most insanely tireless cheerleader and beta for my hd_career_fair story last month when I turned into a whinging snowflake of epic proportions and was wringing my hands over ever having been mad enough to sign up for an H/D fest. :) She suggested Harry/Teddy, actually, when I insisted on writing her a reward, but that shall have to wait for another day, because lo, now it seems my brain is all LET'S WRITE MOAR H/D OKAY. :/

( Office Boy ) - over at daily_deviant, which has a posting monopoly for this month

Feedback is always appreciated, either here or at IJ. :)

( Tweets )

I’ve been mulling this over for a few days, thinking about my own correction letters and how it relates to the various moderated archives.
( Read more... )

I know how most of you feel about what I've been devoting my time to over the last year or so, but I wanted to share with you that I finished posting my Twilight story this afternoon.

In my time in HP fandom I wrote over 20 stories. This Twilight fanfiction is the longest thing I've ever wrote, and not only that, I finished it in less time than my other long WIPs and it's better written. I'm proud of it. Tremendously so. It's not perfect by any means, but I've learned so much from it and it's as close as I could get to o-fic while still hovering within the realms of fanfiction.

If you want to give it a read and then tell me what you think, I would really like that.





( Useless stats because I want to put them somewhere... Feel free to ignore. )

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

So I was feeling kind of blue the other day due to my canceled trip to England and my never ending pain in my back due to the disc protrusion and people in my daily life weren't making it any better because they kept on looking at me kind of puzzled like and saying "You don't look too happy."

Ummm YOU THINK??????? Now I wasn't complaining or whining to anyone. So maybe I looked miserable but I didn't walk around expressing this verbally. I kept it to myself. I felt I was entitled to feeling sad for a couple of days. Feeling sad every now and then is healthy. I mean if I was happy all the time I wouldn't appreciate it when I did feel happy. So spread the emotions around I say.

In any case, upon continued poking by their part as to what could possibly be wrong and my reminder to them about my cancelled trip and back pain most were just like "Oh it can't be that bad. You've been to England before! Smile!"

That's true. I'm also aware of the fact that there are people in way more pain than I am, people who have never been anywhere, and that there are starving people in the world. Yes I get that my life is pretty darn good. But I still feel I can be sad for a few days if I want to be. Being in constant pain also makes it hard to smile. So STFU! (I didn't say that. But I didn't smile either.)

So needless to say I wasn't in the best of moods when I got home. But then my doorman all but assaulted me as I walked in the front door with OMGHOLDONRIGHTTHEREIHAVESOMETHINGFORYOU!!!!!!! He ran into the office and came out bearing a floral arrangement. I was completely and absolutely puzzled. Who the heck would send me flowers? I mean my parents know better (lol) and while a few people knew about my back I couldn't think of anyone who would send me flowers for it. So I went upstairs and unwrapped the arrangement and pulled out the card...

( Read more... )

Of course I set the flowers right up where I could enjoy them and suddenly my cloud of doom lifted and I felt ever so much better. So thank you "Lucius" whoever you are! I assume you are on my flist as I can't think of anyone else who would know that that would be the perfect thing to lift my spirits. If you want to reveal yourself, please go ahead. But if you prefer to remain anon, I understand. It was such a thoughtful gesture on your part and I very much appreciate it and I'm still enjoying my flowers very much. And dare I say...*hugs* ROTF!

( Tweets )

Hi, all!

A colleague of mine makes beautiful, hand-made earrings and necklaces.  She uses vintage glass, vintage lucite, and contemporary glass beads and hand makes the wires/fasteners herself, as well.  Her things are really gorgeous.  I have a pair of her earrings on right now and I love them.

If you're interested, you can check it out here:  The Sleeping Sparrow.

Here endeth the pimping. :-)

Peace,
SW

First of all, happy-making thing of the day (so far): There is a guy in my building who I often see walking his two dogs that look just like him. Heh. They're all sort of burly and stuff but the dogs look really nice. I like seeing them because they seem like a happy family. Lately, I've only seen him with one of the dogs, though, which made me assume... bad things about the other. :( But! This morning I saw both of them again! It just made me super happy that the second dog was okay and back and they were all strutting down the street together again. All is right with the universe. :)

Second of all, recs! So, back in the summer, my co-mod, dracofiend, had this cool idea of doing a Remix mini-fest at our infidelity comm, hp_unfaithful. So we did. :) Anyone who signed up had to offer two of their fics for remixing, and then the other participants could go through that post and just pick anything from the links that they wanted to remix. Not everyone's stories got remixed under this format, alas, but it was a nice, low-stress way to do it.

At any rate, we're all done now, and the masterlist is up, if you're interested in perusing. The remixes are all short and easy to digest over a coffee break. :) I posted my own remix last week, and then when I checked back at the comm over the weekend, I saw that both my proposed stories had been remixed by others! *dancey* And they are both super cool:

The Wedding Bell Blue Balls Remix by gryffindor_j (Remus/James, NC-17, 3,600 words)
While Sirius is off on an errand for the groom, Remus does his best to help the groom out in other ways.

*cackles with glee* This is a remix of my old Sirius/Lily fic, Nice Day for a White Wedding, which features blatant wedding day infidelity. gryffindor_j turned it around to show us just what the groom and his other groomsman might have been getting up to while the best man was having a turn with the bride. *glee* Sexy and funny and a wonderful complement to the original.

To Love, in Six Words (the Slow Drown Remix) by dracofiend (Remus/Bill, PG-13, 1,100 words)
Remus oughtn't be awake, but he is—because of Bill. Always because of Bill.

*clutches heart* This is a remix of my post-DH, angst-trainwreck of a Remus/Bill fic, Fifty Words Unspoken. dracofiend did amazing things not only with Remus's POV and the emotions of all the characters, but also with the weird structure I had in the original. I love how she's chosen six of the title words from each segment and woven them into a new form. Really beautiful and haunting.

Thank you so much, both of you! It was wonderful to read such cool remixes of my stuff. Eeee! If you read and enjoy, be sure to leave a few words of feedback for my lovely remixers. :)