I haven't been on here in ages but if anyone's still around (and cares) -- I have almost finished posting the long-fought-with Katrina fic (Knowledge 'verse) on AO3 here. (It is a huge relief to be nearly done with this -- and only ten years later than anticipated. *Facepalms*)
That new-flush-of-love period when every song you hear reminds you of your recently-discovered OTP. Yeah.
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I posted a new update to both CA and GF 'verses yesterday. I'm not sure how to feel about the recent rash of productivity.
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The way it's looking, I'll be moving at some point in the next six months. I like Lexington but I'm kind of glad? I'm still looking for home and this definitely isn't it, but it has been a nice waypoint.
I went to see Annihilation yesterday and am still thinking about. There's a lot to unpack, I think -- and I was struck walking out by the comparisons the back of my mind was making to Melancholia (female leads with a certain sense of interiority; an "invasion" from outside; wombs and fire; the strictures of formalised relationships; mirrors). Regardless, it was one of the most beautiful films I've seen in a long time. The entire visual effects department deserves all the awards.
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One of the things I most enjoy about tumblr is the random spurring of inspiration from strange places, both for myself and watching it happen to others.
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I am so bad at playing any of the newer Civilization games but I love them all. It's sort of the way I feel about chess: I love playing but I am the worst.
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent If the unheard, unspoken Word is unspoken, unheard; Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard, The Word without a word, the Word within The world and for the world; And the light shone in darkness and Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled About the centre of the silent Word.
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
Where shall the word be found, where will the word Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence Not on the sea or on the islands, not On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land, For those who walk in darkness Both in the day time and in the night time The right time and the right place are not here No place of grace for those who avoid the face No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
-T.S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday"
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I watched Sicario last night after book club. I've decided I quite like Denis Villeneuve as a director.
I am currently reading The Seventh Function of Language and, man, to a person who has extensively studied French literary theory, reading a murder mystery about Roland Barthes where the character list is populated by every-fucking-other French theorist from that time period is pretty fucking incredible. It doesn't hurt that this book is hysterical in all the right ways, either.
I've also just finished Her Body and Other Parties and -- this was on so many "Best of 2017" lists but I just didn't get the appeal? I mean, I enjoyed it, don't get me wrong (even if I completely skipped one of the longer pieces), but I didn't love it. It felt too much like a writing exercise, sort of like the reading equivalent of watching a Christopher Nolan movie for me. I like them, I think they're clever, but they're so focused on the exercise that they're missing an essential piece of heart.
I think mostly I've just been too spoiled by fantastic fic writers and so published fiction just doesn't stack up anymore. I got bored too easily. Maybe an essentially deconstructive problem. (I have been enjoying Seventh Function far too much.)
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I completed a rough draft for the Katrina fic today. Happy Mardi Gras to me.
(Ten years, 104k words, so much fucking bullshit. Now the fun part: revisions.)
I read a great article this morning that spoke to my ongoing love affair with New Orleans and focused on one of its most important facets: food. I highly recommend it, not only for the restaurant recommendations and reviews, but also the writing.
The scent of Popeyes fried chicken in a car is all my brother needs to be transported back to Day 1 of the rest of his life. He’d just turned 6, spending his birthday at an airport in Thailand. It was 1989; my family was sponsored over to the U.S. from southern Vietnam by my uncle, an army captain who was one of the earliest Vietnamese immigrants to settle in America after the fall of Saigon in 1975. He picked them up at the airport, but home would have to wait. First, a family order of Popeyes for the road. My brother’s first meal in America was a piece of fried chicken. It was specifically the aroma wafting within the car that he remembers so fondly, the smell of something completely foreign.
There were also a couple great links: here, talking about the evolution of roux in New Orleans cuisine, and here, discussing "assimilation food," that thing that happens when two cultures rub up against each other and what emerges is something similar and yet wholly different.
Good stuff. I always love reading about food. And eating it.
A few items from the list of things that I have, at over point or another, been told I am not allowed to have:
•Knitting needles •A flamethrower •My safety net of Prozac and Xanax •A nap •Kool-Aid •A spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down •That blanket what I like •A Klondike bar •Another tab of ecstasy •A bit of a lie-in •A light-coloured car •Bare feet •Peace and quiet
Hello, 2018. And anyone who hasn't given up on me in the last year! I am going to try and do better about being around now that I've mostly got my head screwed on straight. Last year was -- kind of tough, in a lot of different ways, but the space has been good and I have good therapists who have been quietly urging me to stop hiding as much, so.
A quick update on the status of me: still in Kentucky, still wrangling childish men around for a living, more prone to anxiety attacks, in the middle of a productive but not visibly so writing jag, sometimes back on tumblr, beginning The Exorcist thanks to the very generous ravurian, often frustrated to tears by my cat, still not over the fact that my new car beeps when I hit the button, and addicted to picross.
How's everyone out there? If there still is anyone tuning in to this frequency, that is.
Author: rei_c Title: A Knowing Change Pairings: Sam/Marinette, Sam/Marie Rating: PG-13 Word Count: 1400
Summary: Marinette is the loa of werewolves and her devotees can turn into loups-garoux if they have her favour. Sam has always had her favour.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and any (and all) errors relative to the canon spoken of herein are mine and mine alone.
Author's Notes: This is past-fic for the 'verse created in Knowledge of Dead Secrets and takes place on one of Sam's first trips to Louisiana and Lissa's.
x Sea Story [SPN | gen | complete] : The one word I can use to describe this is haunting and I'm stopping there because nothing else will do it justice.
x The Bible Forgot to Mention Us [SPN | Sam/Dean, one-sided Sam/Meg | complete] : This is part of a series and I recommend the entire series but this is my favourite. Meg is just -- such a fascinating character and this series delves into her in a way that I wish the show had.
x One Way Out Of Many [Hannibal + HDM elements | Will/Hannibal | chapters posted weekly] : Hannibal and Will (and everyone else, too) with daemons. That's it, that's the difference -- and yet it makes such a big difference.
x The Devil You Know [Twilight | Paul/Bella | WIP] : If you at all like The Black Jewels trilogy and assorted universe, you will want to read this. Trust me.
x Black Sky [Harry Potter & Katekyo Hitman Reborn! | Harry/Xanxus | WIP] : I don't know anything about KHR! but I love this WIP. Featuring fem!Harry, loads of politics, the Mafia, uh -- stuff? I don't even know how to describe it. Lots of things. All the things. So many things.
In my neverending quest to find the perfect black bean brownie recipe, I think I may have stumbled upon something that is quite close. The key, apparently, is coffee flavouring, an extra bit of coconut oil, and a big glob of berry preserves in the middle so they are, in fact, berry preserve thumbprint black bean brownies. Long name, totally delicious. And completely guilt-free: vegan (so dairy-free and egg-free), gluten-free, sugar-free.
Even better, I didn't leave my house this weekend. I had enough food to make the brownies, to make some sticky sesame-ginger chicken stir-fry for lunches this week, and to blend up four smoothies all without having to interact with anyone at the grocery store. I will have to go pick up a few things during the week, though, and run all of the weekend errands I didn't run -- picking up prescriptions, getting my oil changed, MILKSHAKE -- but I'm okay with that. It was worth it to spend the entire weekend in pyjamas and completely mute. Talking is just -- so overrated, you guys.
I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but sometimes I go through phases where I feel -- not necessarily unsafe, but just generally physically uncomfortable being around other people. It's definitely a physical presence thing, not at all related to how much I like or dislike a person, and the number and type of people who this doesn't extend to is very odd and random and would be a little bit hurtful to some of them if they knew where they stood, but somewhere in the back of my mind there is a list of about ten people in the whole entire world that I am comfortable letting into my personal bubble when I go through these phases.
Coworker E is not one of them and yet he is very physically demonstrative: high-fives, fist-bumps, back-pats and shoulder-squeezes, he's a big fan of hugs when he thinks I'm having a bad day or needing one when he is having a bad day. And I just cannot do it this week and I can see that he is a little taken-aback and doesn't understand it at all but I can't explain the giant neon flashing sign above my head saying "DON'T TOUCH ME DON'T TOUCH ME DON'T TOUCH ME" because I don't even know where it comes from, so.
(Of course, it doesn't help that I've sort of moved on from thinking he's a clueless-yet-adorable idiot to an interpersonally-dumb jerk to a out-and-out fucking office asshole, but still.)
Anyway. Touch. No. One person in this state is on my acceptable list of ten people and you are not him, Coworker E. Four people in this fucking timezone are on that list and you are not one of them, Coworker E. So please respect my no touching rule and just be glad that this isn't a selectively mute phase instead.
Title: Using Knowledge to One's Advantage Author: rei_c Pairings: Sam/Dean Rating: PG-13 Total Word Count: 630
Summary: They've been in New Orleans -- off and on -- for ten years. It's time.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Author’s Notes: This is future-fic for the 'verse created in Knowledge of Dead Secrets and does contain extremely (extremely) vague spoilers for the Katrina!fic, currently in-progress. For formalizing.
x Why I Bought A House in Detroit for $500: the more of these Buzzfeed long-reads I, er, read, the more impressed I am. Buzzfeed's good for the short, fun quizzes but also good for the long-form journalism. Who knew. Anyway, I really liked this one.
x White Ghetto: In Appalachia the country is beautiful and the society is broken: this isn't the part of Kentucky that I live in, but it's very close to the part of Kentucky that I live in and it's very close to the minds and hearts of the part of Kentucky that I live in. There's a sense here that it's not very far away at all and that every day, somehow, it encroaches just that little bit closer.
Summary: Dean's been working a missing person's case in Peoria that goes bust, so he heads to Chicago for a long weekend and finds way more than he was expecting.
Warnings: AU, dubious consent due to unknown identity, religious imagery/symbolism, unexpanded-upon backstory
Author's Notes: I rended garments and I'm still not exactly content, but. (Also at AO3 if preferred.)
Androgyne, mon amour, shadows of you name a price exorbitant for short lease. What would you suggest I do, wryly smile and turn away, fox-teeth gnawing chest-bones through?
Even less would that be true than, carnally, I was to you many, many lives ago…
1. Finally made an appointment with a therapist here in town. We'll see how that goes, but she was a referral from my GP and she had good reviews online and the secretary seemed really nice over the phone, so. My appointment isn't for another couple weeks and even if I don't make it a weekly thing like it was in Oklahoma, at least I will have a person here. (This also included me navigating the labyrinthine insurance phone system successfully for precert [which it turned out I didn't need anyway, wow, this insurance plan is pretty a-okay with me] and getting up the nerve to, y'know, not only ask my GP for a recommendation but also follow through, so I'm pretty proud of myself for this one.)
2. Finally bought a mattress for the daybed in the spare room! (I still need to pick it up, but I have purchased it.) Now I just need to, y'know, buy sheets and a quilt and a bedskirt and all that nonsense. And then rearrange everything to fit. Shit.
3. I went to the local Social Security office to get my replacement social security card! This was some quality adulting on my behalf, you guys, and even though it mostly consisted of me sitting for forty minutes and then answering [very friendly and helpful] Brandon's questions for five minutes, I am still incredibly proud of finally getting this done after, like, six years of telling myself I needed to get this done. Adulting: one step at a time.
4. Splurged on the fancy gelato and ate it at work for lunch and didn't even give a fuck.
5. Called out one of my project managers for being a jerk and didn't even give a fuck.
6. Ate a double cheeseburger for breakfast at 5.30am and didn't even give a fuck. (Until about an hour later, when I completely regretted my impetuous decision to get the burger and not, as I had been planning, a club sandwich because whoa, pre-7am is too early for the meat sweats.)
7. Successfully managed to entice every. single. person. in the office into snacking on some of my food at one point or another. I know their weaknesses now. Toffee. Chocolate covered coffee beans. Coconut macaroons. Gelato. Salted in-shell peanuts. Jelly beans. Pecan pie larabars. Mwaha.
I heard "Night Moves" on the radio on the way to work this morning and I have no idea why but it, like, immediately slung me into this really melancholic mood. I just wanna go home and drink tea and curl into the corner of my couch with an afghan and watch Merrick IV repair the web that the handyman ruined yesterday.
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In other news, no real news?
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I've started and stopped and rewritten and erased about six different paragraphs. I don't know what you guys want to hear about anymore or what I should say or what's even worth talking about. So. Um. There's that.
