Media update
Apr. 17th, 2014 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicRemix: Have narrowed it down to a few stories & ideas, but when it comes to putting words in a document, everything goes pfffft.
Vidding: Want to make a thing for con.txt, due end of month. Keep sitting down to clip, then getting bored. I think I might be afraid I can't make it funny... But listen up, self, it's certainly not going to be funny if you can't even draft it.
Watching: Cosmos and Game of Thrones. Keep forgetting Community and The Vampire Diaries exist. Saw season three of Girls. Now plowing through season -- six? whatever the last one was -- of True Blood. The Eric-Willa stuff pleased me, as did the mere fact that they cast Rutger Hauer as the fairy grandfather. Still overall just a bizarre show.
Book reading: Third volume of A Song of Ice and Fire. Might catch up to the show in another couple of weeks.
Fic reading: Have been doing some! After reading the books, I understand better where all the Sansa Stark/Sandor "the Hound" Clegane comes from. Nice subtext there. So I went back to find more of those on AO3. *cough* Being me, went first for the ones with some noncon. Mostly, Joffrey is the villain. Here are some that I bookmarked:
Always Find Me Here by wildsky - Joffrey "punishes" Sansa with the Hound each month she fails to conceive an heir.
The Lioness' Game by madni - Cersei uses the Hound to give Sansa a taste of a real man, then discovers it's less like torment for them than she intended.
The Secret Room by nary - Joffrey has locked Sansa in a kink tower for three years; one day, he brings in a visitor. The end of the first chapter is not as much my cup of tea, but the rest was worth it.
Acts of Generous Cruelty by broomclosetkink - Actually, this one was kind of sweet. Needed tightening up (I skimmed), but I liked the plot of the two castoffs finding love when they were supposed to be humiliated, and what made it a keeper for me was the (quite consensual) losing-of-the-virginity scene at the end.
Now I'm reading this eight bazillion word-long AU that is on many levels a terrible story -- no one is in character, many characters are not behaving like real people, it takes a paragraph to say a sentence, every feeling and action gets spelled out to death, the non-relationship plot is a long cliché, the dialogue is mostly boring or caricaturish, the whole thing needs to be pared waaaaay down, etc. -- yet I can't seem to stop. I think that's because at its heart, it's about a young woman in the form of a Mary Sue learning to be a sexual creature*, partnered with a patient older sex mentor**, and my suspicion that this was written by someone around Sansa's age invites empathy for that exploration and forgiveness for the story's flaws. Mostly.
*Albeit very... very... slowly... and with a type of grown man I don't believe exists in the real world.
**To clarify: I'm about halfway through andthere hasn't been any sex yet. ETA: 49 chapters/197,000 words and we have achieved the first orgasm! Clegane's, in a repeat session of the above-mentioned dry-rubbing, if you were wondering.
Some of the scenes ring true, though, like one time when Sansa accepts Clegane's invitation to tie his hands to the headboard and thus feels bold enough to rock on top of him, both still fully clothed, and when she's had enough of that he has to lock himself in the bathroom and she's still naive enough that she doesn't know or wonder why.
...Oh my God, I just looked and it's almost 500,000 words and not finished yet. Hopefully if I make it that far I won't care by the time I get to the not-end.
Vidding: Want to make a thing for con.txt, due end of month. Keep sitting down to clip, then getting bored. I think I might be afraid I can't make it funny... But listen up, self, it's certainly not going to be funny if you can't even draft it.
Watching: Cosmos and Game of Thrones. Keep forgetting Community and The Vampire Diaries exist. Saw season three of Girls. Now plowing through season -- six? whatever the last one was -- of True Blood. The Eric-Willa stuff pleased me, as did the mere fact that they cast Rutger Hauer as the fairy grandfather. Still overall just a bizarre show.
Book reading: Third volume of A Song of Ice and Fire. Might catch up to the show in another couple of weeks.
Fic reading: Have been doing some! After reading the books, I understand better where all the Sansa Stark/Sandor "the Hound" Clegane comes from. Nice subtext there. So I went back to find more of those on AO3. *cough* Being me, went first for the ones with some noncon. Mostly, Joffrey is the villain. Here are some that I bookmarked:
Always Find Me Here by wildsky - Joffrey "punishes" Sansa with the Hound each month she fails to conceive an heir.
The Lioness' Game by madni - Cersei uses the Hound to give Sansa a taste of a real man, then discovers it's less like torment for them than she intended.
The Secret Room by nary - Joffrey has locked Sansa in a kink tower for three years; one day, he brings in a visitor. The end of the first chapter is not as much my cup of tea, but the rest was worth it.
Acts of Generous Cruelty by broomclosetkink - Actually, this one was kind of sweet. Needed tightening up (I skimmed), but I liked the plot of the two castoffs finding love when they were supposed to be humiliated, and what made it a keeper for me was the (quite consensual) losing-of-the-virginity scene at the end.
Now I'm reading this eight bazillion word-long AU that is on many levels a terrible story -- no one is in character, many characters are not behaving like real people, it takes a paragraph to say a sentence, every feeling and action gets spelled out to death, the non-relationship plot is a long cliché, the dialogue is mostly boring or caricaturish, the whole thing needs to be pared waaaaay down, etc. -- yet I can't seem to stop. I think that's because at its heart, it's about a young woman in the form of a Mary Sue learning to be a sexual creature*, partnered with a patient older sex mentor**, and my suspicion that this was written by someone around Sansa's age invites empathy for that exploration and forgiveness for the story's flaws. Mostly.
*Albeit very... very... slowly... and with a type of grown man I don't believe exists in the real world.
**To clarify: I'm about halfway through and
Some of the scenes ring true, though, like one time when Sansa accepts Clegane's invitation to tie his hands to the headboard and thus feels bold enough to rock on top of him, both still fully clothed, and when she's had enough of that he has to lock himself in the bathroom and she's still naive enough that she doesn't know or wonder why.
...Oh my God, I just looked and it's almost 500,000 words and not finished yet. Hopefully if I make it that far I won't care by the time I get to the not-end.
no subject
Date: Apr. 18th, 2014 01:26 am (UTC)True Blood has gotten ridiculous but we enjoy it anyway. As long as I don't expect it to actually be good television, I can enjoy it plenty. :-)
I'm about a season behind in Vampire Diaries, but am still enjoying it, slowly. I've only seen the first ep of this season of GoT, but as a fan of the books through and though, I'm finding things to enjoy about the HBO series, despite its flaws.
no subject
Date: Apr. 18th, 2014 11:37 pm (UTC)IMO the second ep of GoT was better put together than the first. Great rising tension and some delightfully snappy exchanges.
As long as I don't expect it to actually be good television, I can enjoy it plenty. :-)
It looks like it should be good television, and it's cast like it should be good television, but WTF is it doing?? It confuses me so much. Has done from the start. Yet I can't seem to look away. Vampire romances are irresistable.
Very happy you tried a couple of the fic links and enjoyed! I think the first and third were the best written of the batch.
no subject
Date: Apr. 18th, 2014 04:25 am (UTC)I sneaked when I got to the Kink Tower description. BWEE.
Also, I need to watch more of Cosmos.
no subject
Date: Apr. 18th, 2014 11:40 pm (UTC)the Kink Tower description
:) Not that it's exactly called that in the story, but pretty much that's what it is. Joffrey's Kink Tower Cell of Humiliation and Torment.
What do you think of what you've seen so far of Cosmos?
no subject
Date: Apr. 19th, 2014 03:48 pm (UTC)Sometimes I want to wander the Internet challenging everyone who says that science destroys wonder: that idea is one of my greatest pet peeves, and I share that peeve with greats like Feynman, so I feel vindicated in having it. As someone wise (whose name I can't recall) said, science takes us to the wonder. Cosmos is beautifully showing that.
no subject
Date: Apr. 18th, 2014 06:57 am (UTC)http://archiveofourown.org/works/1183115
no subject
Date: Apr. 18th, 2014 11:47 pm (UTC)Of course, he had broken that gift. When he had thrown the duck soap against the shower door during his short fit of rage, the thing cracked into two pieces. Apparently, it was two pieces of soap fused together at the center from top to bottom with the rope in the center of the two pieces. Well, Sandor had cracked it right open when he threw it. That was how hard he threw the damn thing. As a result, Sansa had never actually gotten that gift. He had broken it, and then he had stuffed it under his bathroom sink and, for the longest time, had forgotten about it until just now.
Considering his dilemma of not knowing how to give a gift to a woman, Sandor thought about the necklace during the entire drive to his apartment. It had been wrapped in a small bag and tucked away into his left pants pocket. The thing had been expensive. It was genuine fourteen carat gold and saltwater pearls, though the gemstones were only cubic zirconia. They weren’t diamonds or anything. If they had been real diamonds, Sandor wasn’t sure how he would have felt about buying the necklace. He wasn’t keen on the idea. Diamonds seemed the sort of thing saved for married couples and not people dating only for three months. Luckily, they hadn’t been diamonds, and the idea of buying saltwater pearls on a gold chain hadn’t bothered him at all.
Eventually realized the trick was to scan the first sentence of each paragraph while scrolling, until there was a sex-related scene.
no subject
Date: Apr. 18th, 2014 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 19th, 2014 12:06 am (UTC)