Thursday, June 20, 2002

On the road again...

Well, you know, sort of.

Taking a break for a day or two. See ya. *g*

Music: for there is in all the world no greater love than mine...

Wednesday, June 19, 2002

And a couple of recs...

DEB! DEB! DEB! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Okay. I suppose I could *try* for articulate... Deb. Has a vid. A Hard Core Logo vid.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Chosen One

I was among the privileged... er... two to see this vid as it grew, and it's fucking lovely. Unlike rock and roll. Spoils nothing in case you're one of the few horrifically underprivileged people who haven't seen HCL yet and still manages to rip you open. I'm in love all over again.

Hard Core Logo!

Go! Go now! Send her feedback!

Soon you, too, will feel the urge to call someone a cunt.

And Sarah T. continues her descent into the gloriously unholy with Night Call, Collect. Her summary for this story was that some negotiations are better conducted at long-distance. And, well... yes.

Definitely yes, when it comes to the Luthors.

Subtle and deadly. Read it twice for the full effect.

Music: Garbage, "Silence Is Golden"

That identity thing.

Made a new friend, and in a conversation spanning "labels," Australian football, and various other things... well:

I don't know. Sometimes I wish I fit more in the traditional labels. Sometimes. Sort of. Kind of.

Like, *just* when I was settling into life as a rollicking sportsdyke, rugger, and functional alcoholic, I get bitten by a bloody tick and wind up spending the next *year* flat on my back, and I haven't been healthy since.

And it's *hard* to be all butch and such when you can't live the life, you know?

All my life I spend hanging with the boys -- though granted, it wasn't until college that I was hanging with the rowdy boys -- and then *bam*, I can't do it anymore.

D: yeah?

D: when will you be better?

D: will you be better?

Te: Heh.

D: I can't say I quite understand how you feel, and if I said I did, then I'd be lying through my teeth to attempt to make you feel better, which I want you to do, but I'm sure there are other ways to do it. but I really do sympathise with you.

Te: Well, they're talking now about shooting people with fibro up with human growth hormone, but that's the latest thing. They don't know if it works.

Te: Thing is? No cure. There are only various pills to treat the symptoms.

D: 'rollicking sportsdyke, rugger, and functional alcoholic' that's the worst bit, you have to leave the rest of your life behind.

Te: And hmm... I bet you understand more than you think. Let me try to put it another way:

Te: You're building a pretty good picture of who you think you are, yeah?

D: Yeah, I'd like to hope so.

Te: *g* You give off that vibe. So, imagine this: suddenly, your body betrays you. Not in any *catastrophic* way, you're not *paralyzed*, but... on any given day? You're no better than 60% of optimum.

You can no longer go to the school where all your friends are.

You can no longer do a lot of the activities you liked to do.

You have to strictly plan all of your vacations/party nights, because if you overindulge in any way, you'll be out of commission for days or weeks.

Your work options are limited.

Your friends are great about it -- hey, they're your friends, right? But most of them don't *quite* get it.

Because there's nothing to see. Most of the time, you don't look sick at all.

D: Okay, so not a very positive picture.

Te: So here's where the change comes in.

You're not a bloody *hermit*, or a monk for that matter, so you make new friends. People whose lifestyle better matches the one you're now forced to lead.

It's not that you don't still love your old friends, it's just that you *can't* move in their circle anymore.

D: That must've been hard.

Te: (still is)

A couple of years down the road, though?

You realize that the "concessions" you made, the "replacements" you gave yourself... they *are* your life.

More than that? They're *you*.

D: So you worked through the loss and it became in integral to the person that you are today?

D: That's amazing.

Te says: Hunh. I'd never written it all out like that before.

...

... and I'm not *entirely* sure I feel about it. Good? Mostly good. A little... not so much bitter as regretful. That particular kind of regret you have when you realize, much too late, that you've missed your chance to give a friend a *proper* goodbye. A while ago I would've been angrier.

But a while ago...

I wouldn't have been me.

Music: Joydrop, "Embrace"

Tuesday, June 18, 2002

Making asses of ourselves.

Fascinating post from LaT and RainCityGirl here.

We really are as guilty (if not more so) of making assumptions as the people on the other side of the "are they or aren't they?" fence sometimes. How many times have we seen idiots post giggly speculative posts on their favorite actor's sexuality because of a look here, a touch there? And no, don't get your backs up, I'm not talking about RPS here.

I'm talking about the mind-boggling threads on Michael Rosenbaum posting board about whether he might be gay because of an interview -- *one* interview -- where he used gender non-specific pronouns. Mind you -- this is on a board where MR had visited before... but that's a rant for another day.

I think there's a certain thrill in this for people, an additional aspect of fandom for these people where the line between character and actor (and yes, *this* is why I say I'm not talking about RPS) is blurred so much as to be nonexistent... thus, perhaps, necessitating those press releases where the tone is often more along the lines of "the lady doth protest too much" than "oh, yeah, and this is his girlfriend ____."

Which is kinda sad.

Still. Doesn't stop *me* from leering at certain *koff* promos *koff*.

Music: Jann Arden, "Cherry Popsicle"

*happysigh*

I am the luckiest girl in the world. See?

Music: Chosen One

Monday, June 17, 2002

And another thing.

As I sit here and muse on the hypocrisy of slashers getting angry at the people who call Amber Benson fat, and then bitch and moan about how "puffy" (and how I've come to *loathe* that word) Xander has gotten... well, you know, it just gets worse, doesn't it?

Let's take a look at a few cold, hard facts, shall we?

Let's take a look at, say, the average slash convention.

Oh, yeah. I'm going there.

How do *you* look in those home videos, hmm?

In horizontal stripes? Capri pants, to steal a current source of sturm of drang from Kat's blog? Belly shirts and low riders and mini-skirts, oh my!

Are you cringing yet? Don't. No, really. Don't. Because those of us who've been to a slash convention or two... well.

Let's be frank. You can't swing a dead cat in fandom without hitting a fat girl or twelve. And yes, I'm looking at you, and yes, I'm sure as fuck including myself. Of course, I like a big girl in skimpy clothes... but that's not what we're discussing. No. What we're discussing today is hypocrisy, and my incredulity, my depression, my fucking *rage*, that a bunch of women who I *know* are smarter than this...

Are still somehow not.

My point's being missed all over the place.

And okay, I know we're not *all* fat, but you know what? Talking this over with the Spike, she points out that a lot of us are *damned* unhealthy. (Oh, and there's another word...) We smoke. We drink. We stay up all night staring into a glowing little box conversing with people we may or may not be too shit-scared to meet in person. We masturbate like crazy because we haven't had a decent relationship in Christ knows how long. Our addictions would terrify a heavy metal band. Our neuroses number in the thousands, and those are just the ones we're brave enough to inflict on our characters of choice.

So... why are we still beating this dead horse?

Or, you know, let's turn things around a bit. I can sense the "you're taking this too personally" accusations coming, after all.

Scene from a story I'm not writing:

Buffy rolled off Spike with a sigh, easily evading the grab at her waist she knew was coming and getting her clothes together.

"'ere, what's this then? I've got my soul, I staked Drusilla last month, *and* I apologized to Xander for shagging his fiancee. I thought we'd worked it out?"

Buffy sighed again. "It's not that, Spike. It's just..." She gestured at the unmistakable lines around his mouth and eyes. "You're really showing your age, you know? Have you considered Botox?"

Music: The bitter music of my bitter bitterness.

Sunday, June 16, 2002

On the issue of Xander's weight.

*sigh* Man, this has been getting on my nerves for a while now.

I think it would be one thing if we were talking about Marlon Brando, but... we're not. We're really just not. We're talking about an actor who purposely bulked up for a different role (Psycho Beach Party) and never lost the weight. We're talking about television, where lighting and angle make one fuck of a difference.

Where an unfortunate(?) angle will put Amber Benson and SMG in the same shot, making the comparisons inevitable. And while we're talking about the women...

I look around fandom and see a *number* of people who I've snarled with happily when people made comments like the ones going around about Xander about female characters.

Now hey, I'm all about the shallow. Really. But I can't help but think that the issue of Xander's weight is a horse so dead the blowflies don't want any part of it anymore.

And I can't help but feel really fucking uncomfortable about the fact that Xander -- *Xander* -- has suddenly become the standard of "hideously fat and unattractive."

Music: How do you feel? I'm lonely...

AAAAACK

I am a DUMBASS. I had a huge long post comparing AnneZo's (hey, look, she's new on the sidebar!) experiences with Ray Bradbury's _Dandelion Wine_ to mine. And I deleted it.

I SUCK. No way I'm rewriting that. Christ.