( Photo-essay-ish thing, inspired by RP from last night. Not triggery! )

I realized why I love Cold Case so much: There is always a happy ending that's never a saccharine one.

Law and Order: SVU doesn't get my devotion in the same way because sometimes, the bad guys get away. Too often, in fact. Or they fail to make their case.

Cold Case? There has only been ONE ep where the bad guy got away with it and even then, he got grabbed later on in the season. They don't cover the court case. I don't know what sentences they get or if they're even found guilty. But that's not the point. The point is that Cold Case always ends with a montage of the guilty person being cuffed and taken away while you see what happened to the other characters in the story.

There is always justice. The good guys always win.

...And right at the end, you see the victim as a ghost. One of the cops sees her or a family member but the point is, the victim is there and got justice and knows it. Even after death, there's that justice there.

I think, sometimes, that my love of Cold Case is really that simple.

The good guys win but it's not about them. It's about the victim.

So every ending is bittersweet because even as you see the bad guy get hauled away, you see the victim too. You don't get to be pleased that the good guys won, it's not as simple as cheering on a sports team. It isn't about the victory of the righteous; it's about the fact that someone is dead and the person responsible for that death has been caught.

Cold Case, more than any other show I know, is about justice and consistently shows justice triumphing while the heart of the show is the people on whose behalf justice fights.

Imagine a superhero comic where the focus wasn't the superhero but the people he helped. If every comic didn't feature something in the superhero's line but instead focused entirely on a character's life and the superhero was just maybe a page or two in the whole issue.

Like that. Cold Case is like that for me.

Justice for everyone. Everyone. The bad and the good alike, their deaths are all investigated and solved.

Good always wins but that doesn't bring back the dead.

Backstory: Following exchange stems from a comment this post on race and colorblindness. The first comment is the comment I responded to, and then I got a PM that I tried to reply to, only to find that PMs couldn't be sent to her. Ergo, posting my response here for her to read.

Juliet_Winters:

Christianity seems to be the best practical system I've seen for drawing disparate peoples together. The desire for revenge is or should be set aside in the name of God. Yes, yes, there are many counter examples, but that's the way it's supposed to play out and that's the way I've seen it play out.

Me:

Of course! Christianity, not Islam or Buddhism or Judaism or any of the other religions around!

I mean, Buddhism, which has never had a single war fought in its name and explicitly forbids the sort of crazy-ass conversion where Christians invade other countries and tear down the temples/mosques of those countries is totally not a better choice.

Personally, I'm an atheist. Not a Buddhist. I just find it ridiculous whenever people suggest religion as a panacea for everything.

( And then we switch forums. )

Meme stole from perivates on livejournal.

• Post ten pictures currently on your hard drive that you think are self-expressive.

• NO CAPTIONS!!! It must be like we're speaking with images and we have to interpret your visual language just like we have to interpret your words.

• They must ALREADY be on your hard drive - no googling or flickr! They have to have been saved to your folders sometime in the past. They must be something you've saved there because it resonated with you for some reason.

• You do NOT have to answer any questions about any of your pictures if you don't want to. You can make them as mysterious as you like. Or you can explain them away as much as you like.

( Whoops. I had to remove all the photos that I'd taken myself since they didn't fit the second bullet point! And it was very hard not to just fill it up with pretty boy pics. )

Rape is not the norm. There is no reason to assume that a fic chosen at random will contain rape or something else triggery.

When people say that you shouldn't read fic that has no warnings on it because it might contain rape/other triggers, what they're in effect saying is that writing fic about rape is perfectly normal and a standard plot device/twist.

No. It's not. There is no way that it's reasonable to say that writing about rape/child abuse/incest is so common that people should think it's the norm and need to take especial care to avoid it.

The current stats are 1 in 3 women will encounter some form of sexual assault during their lifetime. I have no stats like that for fanfic but common sense would seem to imply that all the gen fic and non-triggery fic should outnumber the fics that fall into niches of rape, incest, underage or whatever else can make people flinch.

And even if a third of all fics written do actually involve rape? That's still less than half. That's still not enough to tell readers that it's their responsibility to e-mail the author and ask if the fic contains rape.

Rape is not the norm and people shouldn't have to treat the process of reading fic as if it is.

Taken from bridgetmkennitt:

"With all the buzz filling the air about DW, I wanted to do something that was wholly based on IJ. InsaneJournal is a small community. I liken it in my head to living in Hawaii with the rest of the world (LJ) just a hop, skip, and a jump away. I love my little home. So I came up with a project for me to show that support.

What is it? I plan to comment more on artwork, on vids, on fics, on meta that are posted on IJ*. I'll post more in asylums (a definite do!) since asylums so rarely get love here. I'll keep track of all this on a post so I can see how much I've done, and how much more I need to do. I'm one person, but it's something that is completely in my power to do.

This isn't a negative post about LJ or DW. This isn't a post calling people to arms (though if anyone else wants to comment and post more in asylums, I'm not going to complain *g*). This is just me doing this because I want to. Because I can. (And really, this just gives me more excuses to use my icons. How can I resist!)"

Comments made on my flist won't count, though since there are only two people who post on my flist, that isn't such a big sacrifice. XD Now to start commenting. First up, scans_daily is getting friended. Then I'm going to start doing interest searches and friending new comms to comment on those.

Hey, guess what, iJay?

I HEART YOU!

Maybe I should make I heart iJay icons while I'm at it.

I just caved and bought myself Permanent Extra Userpics. It's only ten extra dollars, and I heart iJay. I really, really do. And when I love companies or products, I want to throw money at them to encourage them to keep going down the right path. It's like the opposite of a boycott!

And as long as we're talking iJay -- I want to smack everyone who ditches iJay for Dreamwidth. I can get ditching eljay if you disapprove of their policies or the way they handle customer relations or whatever but iJay? Hell, Squeaky's consistently gone out of his way to make fandom feel comfortable here, he works incredibly hard on fixing issues whenever they pop up, he has a TWITTER he posts on whenever something goes wrong or iJay has planned maintenance ...

I'm willing to accept that some people can't handle iJay because the asylum theme is triggering for them. But if you've already been on iJay and you're ditching it for Dreamwidth because that's where all the 'cool kids' are? EW. I hated people like that in high school. It's so mindless -- everyone listens to the same music, watches the same movies and frequents the same clubs. If I disliked group think as a teen, believe me, I'm not any more likely to like mob think now in so-called adults.

There's nothing wrong with iJay for it to deserve to get ditched. Wanting to flit over to the next new thing is just flatout shallow. I'm the girl who holds on to fandoms for a long time, whose best friends are still the first real friends she made and who refuses to get rid of her Just William books because she still likes them. Get it? It's loyalty. If someone treats you well or a company is giving you what you want, why switch? squeaky's been amazing. I think he deserves better than to be abandoned like this.

In cooler news, I have a Spiderman bedsheets.

And this is a Placebo icon that I'm using because I love Placeco and seeing this icon makes me happy.

For your birthday, you get a personal soundtrack, courtesy of moi! Dedicated to White Rain, fanficcer, RPer, icon artist, fangirl, political activist, fandom activist and as always, my Ficcer in Crime.



( Song list, lyrics and commentary under the cut. )

Remember when you guys were trying to get me into Wicked? And I refused to take any interest in because I'd read the book and found it incredibly boring and refused to believe that the musical would be any good? And you sent me the soundtrack, insisted that I listen to 'Popular', and I told you it was cute but not really my style and thus dismissed the entire musical soundtrack and didn't bother listening to the rest of it?

I am SUCH an idiot. I really and totally am. I saw the musical in London and it is fantastic. A thousand times better than the book, easily. I'm listening obsessively to Defying Gravity, For Good, Not That Girl and What Is This Feeling. I've downloaded a video recording of the London musical, and have been playing it on repeat for the last six hours. I have fifteen Wicked icons on my insanejournal account.

Consider me converted and absolutely, abjectly apologetic that I didn't listen to you guys when you told me that the Wicked musical is just about the best thing ever. Legally Blonde: The Musical is still my musical of choice but Wicked's a really close second.

Summary of post: Wicked rocks. You guys were right. I was wrong. I apologize x 1000 for not having listened all those years ago when you tried to get me into it. And I desperately need to read Glinda/Elphie fic now.

When I was younger, I used to be scared of the dark.

By younger, I don't mean five or six. I mean thirteen, fifteen -- that sort of younger. I used to be scared of the dark because I have an overactive imagination. What I can't see, I populate with horrors. Zombies, vampires, haunts and ghouls lurked in every corner, ready to snatch up me if I let my guard down.

Then I grew older and a new danger was added: Rapists.

Take Back The Night, the classic edition, usually has a parade/rally at the end, where people march in a long column, carrying candles. The idea is that there's safety in numbers and so the girls carrying the candles can march into the night with no fear, reclaiming it as a space for them and refusing to believe that the night is only safe to walk in if you're a white, cisgendered, heterosexual male.

Today, I did a Take Back The Night march of my own. I didn't mean it to be one when I started out. I just wanted to get some exercise, so I walked 7km to my cousin's house, chatted with her for a little, then refused her offer to give me a lift so that I could get more exercise by walking back. As I walked back, it started to get dark. I'd left my house at 7:47PM. Now it was past 9PM, and I was walking down the same street where my father had been followed by three men and had racist insults thrown at him.

I was walking alone, in the dark, in the same country where my teenage, female cousins were followed home by racist idiots who threw rocks at them while yelling insults. The same country where I'd seen a small East Asian girl get trapped in a corner of the bus by some Austrian man, while right next to him, a soldier in full uniform sat and did nothing. The same country where on the way to my cousin's house, just an hour ago, I had a man yell something at me from the window of a moving van.

I was alone, it was dark, and it was definitely hostile territory.

I had my cellphone on me. I could've called my mother and asked for a lift home. Considering the terrain, my parents would've been glad to oblige. I could've waited at a bus station, taken the bus, and my parents would've been none the wiser. Both of those would've been safe moves to make. Smart moves to make.

Instead, I turned my MP3 player onto repeat 1, kept 'Defying Gravity' from the Wicked soundtrack playing, and walked home defiantly. My parents first moved to Austria when I was 5. I went to a German kindergarten. I speak German. I buy groceries here. My parents pay rent for the house we live in. We contribute to the Austrian economy.

I have just as much right to walk the streets as any Austrian does. I have just as much right to walk the streets unmolested for the color of my skin, my eyes, my hair, the accent in my words or the rainbow band on my wrist. The streets were not built for the exclusive use by men. The concrete has no impressions in it that say 'both genders by day, men only by night'. Why should I have to only walk outside safely alone during daylight hours? The night is mine, and the streets are mine as much as they are yours.

I have the right to walk the streets at night if I chose and tonight, I chose to exercise that right. I flinched when people went by me on bikes, and my hands curled into fists with no conscious instruction from my mind. When I saw a man walking in front of me and realized I was catching up to him, I chose to keep walking instead of crossing to the other side of the street, even though I could tell by the way his steps slanted that he was drunk. I overtook him and walked on, expecting any moment to feel him throw his cigarette against my back.

He didn't. I kept walking.

And now, I am safely home, tired but exulted by the knowledge that for an hour and a half, the streets of Austria were mine by moonlight, in the night, in the darkness. This is the part of my post where I'd normally be encouraging you to follow my lead. I won't -- not for this. I did something reckless, acting out of a sense of how I wanted the world to be instead of how it is. I can't tell you to do this, to walk out into the night and assert your right to do so with no more fear than a member of the ruling class, because it could get you hurt. It could get you beaten up, insulted, raped, spat at, or killed, depending on where you live and how poorly you fit their idea of power looks like.

If I thought it would change anything to tell you to do what I did, to walk freely in the night time, I'd tell you to do it. But women aren't going to take to the streets en masse to make the point that the streets belong to them as well, and telling you, alone, to go out and reclaim the night would be telling you to be a target. I won't do that.

But I will say that if you do? You will feel powerful. You will have taken for yourself the hours that society insists are reserved for those with power; you will have taken their power and proven that their power is your power, and there is no reason why you should not have that power too.

Nice was fantastic. I heart France and Greece in general, and Nice has good memories for me. Some of the highlights of the trip were:

• trying beef tartare for the first time (didn't like it, but hey, new experience!)
  
• getting to have a hotel room all to my own with my parents next to me
  
• finding sea glass and collecting it (read out it in one of the Chicken Soup For The Teenager's Soul book)
  
• buying leather wristlets that you lace up
  
• buying a chicken for a homeless woman and her kid
  
• seeing a whole pig roasting in a square (HUGE pig, big as me!)
  
• a really nice French guy stopping to offer directions just because he saw me about to open up a map
  
• motorbikes EVERYWHERE! I was in some sort of heaven, I swear.

I have tons of photos and shall be posting them on dA to save my Photobucket bandwidth and because Flickr has a limit on how many photos it'll let you upload with a free account. Boo.

Currently, I'm catching up on Amazon Fail, getting ready to celebrate the Sri Lankan New Year, and trying to write RP posts. Work tomorrow, was going to wear a sari, but am far too tired to do that now. It looks like I'm going to be using these to shop for English books/manga now.

So utterly tired. Going to finish the posts that I promised, then crash to -- OH CRAP, 11:30 already?! Okay, fuck finishing posts. Bed. Now.

I leave you with this thought -- if I step on your foot, you tell me it hurts, then my next moves are going to be to apologize for hurting you, and then move my damn foot. Just saying sorry isn't enough.

Oh. And this, mostly because of the cheesecake:



Now to bed.

1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.
2. Turn your music player on and turn it on random/shuffle.
3. Write a drabblet/ficlet related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterward! No matter how whacked out your drabble is. :)
4. Do ten of these, then post them.

( Not That Girl, Wicked Musical, Mai/Jounouchi, Yugi/Anzu. )

( Popular, Wicked Musical, Rebecca & Mai. )

( Nazi Halo, Jack Off Jill, Yami no Bakura gen. )

( Part Of Your World, The Little Mermaid, Cure Mermaid & Harpie's Brother. )

( Snakes, Voltaire, Yami no Bakura/Seto. )

( One Girl Revolution, Legally Blonde soundtrack, Varon+Mai, Jounouchi+Mai. )

( Meant To Live, Switchfoot, Ryuuji gen. )

( A Guy Like You, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Jounouchi/Mai, Yugi+Jounouchi. )

( if he tries anything, ani di franco, Mai/Isis. )

( Head On Collision, New Found Glory, Ryuuji/Seto. )

( Yellow Brick Road, Jack Off Jill, Leon gen. )

what is more exquisite? by =ficklegoddess on deviantART

&


Rainbow of the Ocean by =ficklegoddess on deviantART

Maybe I have some talents after all :P

Find a poem you love and post it.

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

-Anne Sexton

To celebrate Sri Lankan Independence Day, I'm offering to write people's names for them in Sinhala.



Above image is my name, written in Sinhala. If you want me to write your name in Sinhala, comment! Please spell your name correctly and next to it, in brackets, put how it's pronounced, since Sinhala has more vowels than English.

For example:

Fickle (Fick-el, rhymes with trick-hell)

And then I'll write your name and you can show it off. XD

Who wrote 'em: fickle aka only_fiction

What it is: Rachel/Tobias, Animorphs. [used for thought speech]

What that means: Ten fics. Ten genres. Ten words or less.

Why you should try writing your own: It is so much harder than it looks. Really.

Why I'm crying on the inside: Because this really IS harder than it looks!

Other stuff I want to say: Want to see me do this for any other pairing other than the one I chose? Leave me a comment with the pairing and I'll do my best. I could use the writing exercise. XD Having actually written the meme results, NO WAY. Much too difficult to do multiple times. So first five comments only get to make requests.

( Less than a hundred words of fic and I cut it anyway? )

only_fiction. I now have a writing journal up on insanejournal, and spent most of today getting the layout customized to a form that I like. I think the basic look of it works well enough that I can use it for my personal journal as well, though obviously more cornflower blue-and-white instead of grey-black-green like my fiction journal is.

Header image comes from a doujinshi I own -- Ryuuji's very green eyes. XD And the text is from an Ani di Franco song.

Now to start transferring over fics! Specifically, Netherworld, since that's going to cross over the ff.net rating soon and require me to either start posting the chapters elsewhere or e-mail people the chapters individually.

Test entry.

Whatever you're doing right now, stop. Go read Little Brother instead.

Little Brother is the best book I've read all year. This would have more meaning if it wasn't the start of the year, so let me rephrase that. Little Brother might be the most awesome book that I could possibly read this year.

There's an excellent summary of the book here, so I'm not going to hash over the book. Instead, I'm going to give you bullet points as to WHY you should read it.

• The author references our culture. Flashmobs, Linux distros, game systems being cheap but the games expensive, livejournal, Flickr, everything. And he gets it right! You've seen what happened when the media tried talking about Anonymous versus Scientology. This guy actually manages to create a believable 17-year-old narrator.
  
• It's about Homeland Security and what happens when safety trumps freedom. The title's a homage to 'Big Brother' but unlike 1984, this book is set in our times. Modern times. It's much easier to get sucked into this book because the protagonist is our age and deals with our tech, instead of being an adult with a forbidden love affair.
  
• On that note, the book deals with the generation gap and how adults are more likely to buy into the scare tactics of the media. But it doesn't present all adults as rigorously inflexible. There are good guys amongst the grown-ups, and bad guys amongst the kids, and the way that he manages to make moral ambiguity and self-righteousness a major theme of the novel is amazing.
  
• Race issues! It's a bit of a throw away in that it's not a major theme of the book, but that's part of what makes the sudden discussion of them so fantastic to me. There's a quick convo between the protag and a friend of his about how the friend will suffer more if they're caught, and the protag acknowledges that yes, brown people have the scales balanced against them. It's a tiny little thing, not a major part of the book, but oh, how fantastic it is to se it acknowledged as a part of real life instead of glossed over or forgotten about.
  
• Awesome female chars. There's not just the standard love interest and the best friend chick, but also female chars with authority, female chars who are bad guys, and female chars who rock the geek world. They're depicted as being as much a part of the world as the male protag is, and the author's Net-savvy enough to even have the protag be wary of one girl that IMs him because the protag knows how many guys like pretending to be girls online.
  
• Neil Gaiman, Scott Westerfeld, Brian K Vaughn, and I love it. I fully intend on buying copies IRL and making my friends read them. Since most of you are lucky enough to not live near me, I'm instead devoting the entirety of this post to trying to convince you to read it.

You know what else is awesome? The author himself and his thoughts on ebooks and sharing books/music online. His explanation for why he gives his books away for free online is quoted below, because it's just said so well that any attempt on my part to sum it up would pale in comparison to his original words.

I recently saw Neil Gaiman give a talk at which someone asked him how he felt about piracy of his books. He said, "Hands up in the audience if you discovered your favorite writer for free -- because someone loaned you a copy, or because someone gave it to you? Now, hands up if you found your favorite writer by walking into a store and plunking down cash." Overwhelmingly, the audience said that they'd discovered their favorite writers for free, on a loan or as a gift. When it comes to my favorite writers, there's no boundaries: I'll buy every book they publish, just to own it (sometimes I buy two or three, to give away to friends who must read those books). I pay to see them live. I buy t-shirts with their book-covers on them. I'm a customer for life.

( Neil went on to say that... )

Love him, read the book, and spread word of the book around as much as you can. This guy is one of us. He talks about our technology, he writes about our world, and he's good at it. He's a geek to the core, and one who doesn't back down from tackling politics head-on. I'd fangirl about it more, but I'm going to see if he's written anything else.

Snagged from yamievandar, who snagged it from misura who got it from alighiera, who nicked it from ariss_tenoh. Some of text has changed, but the basic point remains the same.

Her idea, is a one-sided private Yuletide, i.e. you get a story without having to write one in return. (This is a quote.) The rules are:

1. If you're on my FList, you get to play. If you're not on my FList but are reading this post, you also get to play.

2. You can request up to four different fandoms (or the same fandom four times, or whatever you want including crossovers as long as they are sensible i.e. do not require gigantic leaps of faith and suspension of doubt, reality and canon to work) - but please give me at least a character or pairing to work with and, if you wish, a phrase, setting, theme or whatever you want me to put in the story.

3. If there's something you absolutely want (or don't want) to see in your story, tell me.

4. You don't need to limit your requests to the fandoms I have listed below. Feel free to request any fandom at all, but keep in mind that the odds of me picking up a book are a lot better than the odds of me acquiring six seasons of a TV-show or a complete anime-series.

5. I will earnestly try to write at least one of your requests before the end of 2008.

The deadline for making requests is December 28th. The deadline for me to finish writing at least one of your requests is December 31st next year. My inner procrastinator likes this part quite a lot.

Also, if I owe anyone a GiftFic: I have probably forgotten what it is and lost the bunny for it. You can request it again here and it will be counted as part of the Yuletide thing. You can, of course, request something entirely different if you want. brownie_utonium and ceresi, you are exempted from this since I'm still working on your pieces.

My personal edit: If I can't write something, I'll graphic something up instead. Icons, banner, dolls, whatever. ♥ So you'll get SOMETHING, at least.

( current fandoms! )

My preference tends to be for writing slash, but I'm fine with het and femmeslash too! One caveat: No requests for explicit sex scenes, please. I tend to suck at those, and not in the fun way. ♥ Fade to black is Fickle's friend!

YAY ICONS! I woke up one morning with inspiration for an icon set floating about in my head, then spent most of a day working on them. Cue a set of 85 '[name] is my hero' icons. XD The icons are of various characters/groups from DC, Marvel, Star Wars, Star Trek and Misc. Characters featured included members of the Batfamily, the Supes, X-Men, Teen Titans, Outsiders, Green Lanterns, Spidey-world and many more.

And this gave me a chance to break in my new icon journal in ijay, iconic!

Samples:

001

002

003

004

Choose your hero/ine here at iconic!

And if you can think of a hero/ine that'd icon well (as in, has a very recognizable symbol), then go ahead and suggest it via comments. I'm thinking of making an Avatar set and maybe a Naruto set, with the village and element signs, though that'd obviously be more for groups than for individual chars, alas.

sickficfest is a comm that's centered around writing bad people doing very bad things.

Surely you can see why I'd be interested.

It's accepting prompts until the end of September, the prompts will be claimed during October and the actual fics will only be posted in February. How can I wait that long?!

If you don't have the time or patience to write, go submit prompts here anyway because I want to write and so far, there are only two fandoms that I could possibly write for. And I'm getting a little carried away with submitting prompts myself at the moment anyway.

cybernetic future, wires through her veins
she feels the pulse of information in place of emotion
emo poetry and pro-ana make her suck her cheeks in
she regards herself in the mirror and camwhores
camera in her eyes and the click of her eyelids
the perfect old-style camera covers

her smile is black and every tooth is lettered
her canine teeth are enter keys and her tongue
is made of cables braided together

she is the perfect girl for this digital world
she is a creation of her own self-loathing

humanity was never worth it
humans never deserved her

now she is unique

and tomorrow
there will be a million more like her
marching down the assembly line
demanding android rights

As with everything, she wants only the best, so when she decides to divorce her emotions from herself, she hires the most skilled lawyers she can find.

At $500 an hour, they don't tell her she's crazy. Why let the psychiatrists get their hands on her fortune if they can have it?

They draw up an agreement for her emotions and herself to sign, and pronounce the matter close once the two identical signatures mark the bottom of the page.

The first time PMS hits, she sues them for malpractice.

She wins millions, but is too busy crying to care.

Taken from the_willow, my user icons of people/characters of color. I'm so used to anime that I forgot all the YGO/Japanese chars count as characters of color.

( while the light lasts/I will remember/and in the darkness/I will not forget )

Taken from ceresi -- and because I'm a freak, I chose different quotations for my lj, ij and dj, making a total of fifteen quotations I've chosen overall. XD

That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.

William J. H. Boetcker

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

Carrie Fisher (1956 - )

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.

Juan Ramon Jiminez

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

Albert Camus (1913 - 1960)

Random quotes meme, borrowed from ceresi! Go here and refresh until you get five quotes that resonate with you, then put them up in your journal.

To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return. To just give. That takes courage, because we don't want to fall on our faces or leave ourselves open to hurt.

Madonna

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

Christopher Morley

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

John Viscount Morley

Three failures denote uncommon strength. A weakling has not enough grit to fail thrice.

Minna Thomas Antrim

While trying to convince Savior to get a Twitter, he made two mock Twitter-compilations to show what it would be like if he got one. I'm posting the one where he sporks my Twitter posting patterns.

Lysander [PWNED, care of Fickle] says:
Rewritten to best appropriate Savior-world equivalents.

I love Fickle. XDDD 1 minute ago
@ ficklediety omg! See, exactly! Did you see the link in the comments?! 2 minutes ago
Awww, the Kiwi got sent home for making crappy vegetarian curry. 4 minutes ago
"WHAT HAPPENED TO ANDRAE?!" 8 minutes ago (there's no substitute)
Watching Top Chef and chatting with the Brat. <333 9 minutes ago
[tinypic] <-- omg wtf is that!? I AM SCARRED XDDD 11 minutes ago
Back from cooking. Made spagbol and twelve icons. *accomplished!* 14 minutes ago
Something just set off the fire alarm. 16 minutes ago
[ extraneous Gunslinger quote] 18 minutes ago
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[ extraneous Gunslinger quote] 20 minutes ago
[ extraneous Gunslinger quote] 20 minutes ago
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Wtf? Livejournal is down? 26 minutes ago
Awake. 29 minutes ago

You gotta love that boy. Especially for his succinct explanation of WHY the Gunslinger quotations:

Lysander [PWNED, care of Fickle] says:
The following message could not be delivered to all recipients:
But Gunslinger was just my equivalent because I couldn't think of anything else I quoted recently, and you have a tendency to include EVERY BIT OF DIALOGUE in the show you're watching

Narcissus Reborn [Lysander has been PWNED!] *unicef says:
*dies and hides* I do not! Just the good bits. XD Otherwise you would be DOOMED when I watched two seasons of Practice in a row -- I just didn't find anything there worth quoting.

In conclusion? I love my friends. And I love my Twitter. *hugs it*

thursday: drowning in love

friday: drowning in doubt

saturday: drowning

sunday: God, I can't drag my
self to church this morning.
please make a house call.

~*~

Plans:
next month:

find someone new.

this month:
get over you.

this week:
get you back.

today:
survive

~*~

I'd have a nervous breakdown
only
I've been through
this too many
times to be
nervous

~*~

THE QUESTION OF SUICIDE:

Keep it a question.
It's not really an answer

~*~

the layers I have put
around the pain of
your going are thin.

I walk softly through
life, adding thickness
each day.

a thought or a feeling
of you cracks the surface.

a call to you
shatters it all.

I spend that night in death

and spin the first
layer of life
with the sunrise

~*~

I'm past the point of going
quietly insane.

I'm getting quite
noisy about it.

The neighbors must think
I'm mad.

The neighbors, for once,
are right.

~*~

I am missing you
far better than
I ever loved you.

~*~

I write only
until I cry
which is why
so few poems
this month
have been
completed.

it's just
that

~*~

a new morning
of a
new life
without you.

so?

there will other.
much finer,
much mine-er.

and until then
there is me.

and because I treated
you
well,
I like me better.

also, the sun rises.

~*~

the need you
grew
still remains.

but less and less
you seem the way
to fill that need.

I am.

~*~

Someday we are going to be lovers.
Maybe married.
At the very least, an affair.

What's your name?

~*~

I loved,
which was purgatory.

I lost,
which was hell.

and I survived.
Heaven!

~*~

I found the poems in a book called "How to survive the Loss of a Love", along with many others, but those are the ones that I liked best. Especially "Layers" "Neighbors" and "Plans". Originally, I posted them to my deadjournal on the 14th June, 2003, and while I was going through my deadjournal and flocking entries, I found them and decided to share them here with all of you.

They don't have to be about love directly. I take them more as a set of general life rules for survival.

Theme for English B

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you--
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me--we two--you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me--who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records--Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white--
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me--
although you're older--and white--
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

-Langston Hughes

Cumulative: ...you read a lot. Field a question?
me: Sure.
Cumulative: I'm pretty sure you're least competent on my list to answer as relates real life, but in terms of fiction! I'm stuck with trying to figure how you would convey sexual tension between people who aren't attracted to each other. I know there's some way logistically to fit that together but it's bothering me I can't think how it's been done. I don't...read enough apparently to know how to describe that dynamic.
me: What sort of sexual tension?
As in, purely emotional-based?
Sex as a conduit for something else, or an expression of dominance or underlying issues?
Cumulative: I'm going to go with underlying issues, but the crux of the thing is overtly not that they have sekrit unresolved feelings of slashfick'd. Something ugly and uncomfortable between platonic friends, but furthermore and maybe more importantly not even about attraction. Word of the day is frustration. It can't be shippy, and I think that's the obvious interpretation people would make.
me: Do they want to have sex with each other?
Or is that awkward state of being highly acute of the other person as a sexual being and not being able to turn it off and getting grossed out and wishing you could and having no idea why it's so striking to you?
Dismayed-ish.
Cumulative: Definitely not the former, the latter's closer but not on it. But that acute involuntary awareness is in there somewhere, but it's... Ha, I pick the best times to try to sort shit out. "Oh it's three in the morning and I'm dying of sick and I havent' slept in days, let's work on needlessly complicated sections of something no one will ever read!" :P It's sexually charged but it's nothing you'd act on or even want to, no romantic chemistry and no real sexual attraction and no desire to change either of those, just a really ugly, destructive undercurrent to things. Hinged on frustration, regret, and a definite feeling of lack of control, being locked into a course of events you didn't choose and didn't want and not being able to get out now -- but those aren't triggered by the sexual tension, they trigger it.
me: Yeah, you pick good times, I'd been about to go to bed when I saw it said that you'd entered text so I waited to see if you were sicker :P
And.
Okay, so, I think I might get what you mean. Sort of.
All those ugly things twisting and manifesting as sexual tension.
In the sort of scummy, simmering undercurrent, like boils under the surface of your skin making you flush red like you're blushing.
?
And uh, I think the word is trans-something.
transmutation? No. Not quite.
Cumulative: Transference? When you unconciously shift feelings from one person onto another, i.e. people will feel enraged with their therapist but not their abuser?
me: Maybe.
Something like that.
But it has to change in the process.
Transference changes location, not object.
Cumulative: It's definitely ... experiencing the turmoil of all the rest of it as redirected -- transubstantiation, like the blood of Christ? :P[/relevant bit]

The weird thing is, I think that I really like that dynamic. But I have a thing about passionate, self-destructive relationships, tangled about with self-loathing and jealousy. Crazyverse Ryuuji/Seto is possibly the epitome of how I like that relationship, but the thing is, that sort of relationship is doomed. Either the people in it die, or the relationship does, and the former's more likely because in that kind, you just can't let go. it's not the sort of thing I'd RP, because it's a going-nowhere-downwards-spiral-locked-together relationship that's far from cheerful, but I love reading about it. It's not even about the sex, in those relationships, and maybe that's why it works for me as an asexual. It's about the emotion, and the confusion of it. Sex is like violence; just another way to express yourself. Sex is more about hate than about lust, even.

pick-up lines for feminists

Lesley Kartali


making the move

at the bar

the club

the pro-choice rally

or the conference

on women's rights

in the 21st century

is no easy task

for feminists

young and old.


how do you

subtly ask for digits

while still making it

perfectly clear

that you are fine

being alone

and are certainly

not buying into the idea

that women are worthless

without a significant other?


just remember to smile.

or not.

(depending on if you

feel like it)

and try some

of these lines

on for size:


if i could rearrange

the alphabet

i would put u and i

together

and then we could

work on trying

to think outside

of this male dominated

language.


your paradigm or mine?


you're so sweet

you put hersheys

out of business.

so sweet

you can bring down

all those

bastard big businesses.


somebody better call

god/allah/buddah/

assorted goddesses/etc.

because he/she/gender neutral being

are missing an

angel/messiah/messenger.

*if atheist this line may not work


did it hurt?

when you fell

from the top

of the hierarchy

when society

identified you

as a woman?


pinch me.

with consent of course.

you are so

third wave

i must be dreaming.


where have you been

all my life?

hopefully fighting

against oppressive

patriarchal systems.


your feet must be tired.

because you have been

running through my

mind and struggling

against the repressive

gender roles

that we have been

socialized into

all day.


if the personal is political

then our getting together

has the potential

to subvert the patriarchy.


what's your sign?

radical? liberal?

socialist? cultural?

eco?


if these lines fail

don't worry.

it's probably just

because our

fascist media

has embedded

said pick-up line

receiver

with the idea

that you are a

crazy

scary

man-hating

castrating

bitch.


just keep telling yourself.

if they haven't

started questioning

what society

tells them yet.


then maybe

they are not

the one

for you.

I am weirdly fond of this, even though I hate pick up lines in general. XD Maybe it's just because these amuse me with how twisted they are.

Genius Child.

This is a song for the genius child.
Sing it softly, for the song is wild.
Sing it softly as ever you can -
Lest the song get out of hand.

Nobody loves a genius child.

Can you love an eagle,
Tame or wild?
Can you love an eagle,
Wild or tame?
Can you love a monster
Of frightening name?

Nobody loves a genius child.

Kill him - and let his soul run wild.

-- Langston Hughes

This is yet another poem I came across thanks to that anthology of poetry and adore.

It fits a lot of the characters that I like to RP; it hits me hard every time that I read it, imagining the command 'Kill him' being said in a whisper.

Helen

All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.

All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

Greece sees unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.

-- H. D.

Last, last spring, I found this poem in an anthology for a course on poetry that I was taking. I fell in love with it, wrote it out by hand multiple times to make sure that I would remember it, and now I'm reposting here for other people to read and adore. Helen, obviously, is Helen of Troy.

I have a thing for beautiful, painful poetry. Expect lots of it to be posted here while I'm backing up my livejournal. ♥

[Error: Invalid poll ID 396721]

Title: All Fall Down.
Pairing: Ryuuji/Malik
Summary: A different take on changeshipping from my usual outlook. Dark. The version I posted to ygo_yaoi has a different ending, just for the record.
Word Count: 1,034

( All Fall Down. )