bironic

What I've been up to, midsummer edition

Thu, 02 Aug 2018 19:15:22 GMT

Doing

I spent May working 24/7 on the vid; did little but watch TV in June; then spent three-quarters of July working 24/7 on an article for my job. Now it's back to chillin' out, by which I mean doing the minimum at work while visiting friends and family, consuming media, daydreaming and going for the occasional swim. Things will achieve balance again at some point.

Oh, and my birthday happened last week. 'Twas a pleasant one. Some friends made me dinner ♥, and some other friends and I went for fancy Italian over the weekend. marginaliana made a beautiful Star Trek and blood moon-themed card and thingswithwings wrote an Odo/Quark flashfic. Other surprise gifts included a quart of farm-fresh blueberries, a book on Hollywood Gothic and a Ravenclaw button. Happy double chai to me. The Hebrew kind, not the tea.

Going

I popped down to NYC for 24 hours to catch my beloved friend A., her husband V. and their five-year-old while they swept through three states on a business trip from Munich. The timing was terrible, but it was a joy to see them; I hadn't seen A. in three years. That kid was born a few months before we all left DC. Time flies.

My mom came to MA for a class mid-month, so I hung out with her for a few days. That was nice, although it would've been nicer if I hadn't had to work. We played mini golf, went to an art museum, walked around a lake and watched bits of the Harry Potter marathon on TV. Food highlights: lamb burger with goat cheese, sunflower seed risotto, cocktail made with local blueberries.

Next weekend is vividcon, the last before it metamorphoses into fanworkscon in 2019. It already sounds like people's emotions will be running high. I'm aiming to remain calm, set simple goals—i.e. "meet sol_se"—and not have too-high expectations for hanging out with people who will all be trying to do and feel A Lot. My perspective: It is just another Vividcon, this is not the last opportunity to see vidders, not everything has to be 'a moment.' It helps that I'm not showing any new vids amidst the glut of premieres. So far the worst I have to deal with is performance anxiety over co-modding a panel. (If you have requests for multifandom vidding topics, drop a line here!)

Watching

The movie adaptation of a play I'd wanted to see but missed, Marjorie Prime, which, like Robot and Frank, and like Westworld only less irritating, uses AI as a lens to explore age-related memory loss, how memories help construct a person, how they can be manipulated, and what happens to memories themselves and echoes of people as time passes and stories get conveyed second- and third-hand. The movie dipped in the… third quarter? But the beginning and end were wonderful.

Other than that, a string of movies and shows featuring Zahn McClarnon.

I watched six seasons of Longmire in about a month, whoops. It's a present-day sheriffing show set in rural Wyoming. Came for Zahn as the police chief of the neighboring Cheyenne reservation; stayed for him and Lou Diamond Phillips, Katee Sackhoff and some heartfelt seeking of justice. Post pending when writing about it feels less intimidating.

Writing

Fic!! Although I've been playing with Mary Sues on my hard drive here and there, it's been two years since I posted a story to the AO3 (Here rest, interred without a stone) and three years since an actor or source inspired a cluster of fics (the Inkheart trio, plus two WsIP I swear I'll finish one day). In the last month, I've started no fewer than three stories, thanks to Zahn McClarnon characters.

So far:

- 1,400 words of an indulgent Mathias/OFC dubcon aphrodisiacs story for Longmire

- 670 words of the vampire threesome flashbacks no one else has written despite the clear subtext in this one episode of Midnight, Texas

- 2,000 words of noncon inspired by a scene in the premiere of The Red Road that I watched on Sunday. I should have known noncon would overcome the writer’s block.

- Well, and 6 lines of Mathias/Cady (Longmire), but I'm not sure there's enough to hang a story on

It's both motivating and refreshingly low-pressure to observe how few AO3 fics there are for some of these characters. ( Quick examples: )

I need all the momentum I can get, being so rusty at this point and easily defeated by self-recrimination and any narrative problems that arise. disgruntled_owl and other local fic-writing friends have been great help on both fronts, offering solutions and encouragement.

Vidding

I've recovered enough from "The Greatest" to plan vids again. I'd like to make one for Longmire; given that I've been humming a particular song candidate for about six weeks, chances are it'll be set to that.

Also on the docket is the second FandomTrumpsHate vid, for deelaundry. We've narrowed it down to two options: either the opening credits to a TV show she has been imagining for a while or a remix of her "all you can kink" Tango & Cash vid.

Reading

Can wait for another post.

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My latest actor fixation

Thu, 02 Aug 2018 01:23:29 GMT

Hi friends! I appear to have developed a new celebrity crush, which I should talk about for the record and so there is a chance anyone will read the rare-fandom fics I've started writing for some of his characters.

<-- It is this guy, Zahn McClarnon, a.k.a. Mathias on Longmire ♥, a.k.a. Akecheta on Westworld and Hanzee Dent in the second season of Fargo, a.k.a. Grant Johnson (not Tonto) in the Jesse James episode of Timeless and a vampire (!) in one episode of Midnight, Texas, a.k.a. a side character in at least three Jason Momoa projects: Frontier, Braven and The Red Road. Plus the requisite host of Western frontier period pieces, none of which I've tried yet.

…This post keeps not getting finished because I go down half-hour tangents on Google Images and Pinterest.

Usually I like my actors tall and slim. Zahn is slight, but he's small—he's my height, 5'6"—and I'm enjoying that more than anticipated. He also joins a decades-long tradition of crushes I've had on men with long hair (*cough* Jon Campling), although I'm interrogating that more than usual here, given the history of white people fetishizing Native people's hair, at least in the United States. Zahn is Irish and Hunkpapa Lakota, of the Standing Rock Sioux.

So much of what I enjoy about watching him lies in the body language and delivery. Aside from that, I love the twinkle in his eye when he plays characters like police chief Mathias and vampire Zachariah. I love that his voice is fairly high-pitched and that his dialogue sometimes sounds like a croon. He has beautiful hands, and I love that he shows them off by doing things like this or driving with one wrist on the steering wheel. I love that he steals scenes, and conveys that there's much more to some of his characters than the scripts make explicit, and, you know, acts, shifting from sweet to menacing in a moment, portraying characters who are dry or slow or melodramatic or nasty or tormented or wide-eyed with wonder.

I enjoy that he hangs out with Taika Waititi and Gil Birmingham and Cliff Curtis and stuff and snuggles up to costars (see also) and photobombs Jason Momoa.

Can you believe it took three sittings to write this much? I want to do a series of reviews like with the Paul Bettany project of 2015, especially in preparation for these fics in progress, but I guess they will go in separate posts. (People were upset he didn't get nominated for an Emmy for his standout Westworld episode! Longmire turned out to be a wonderful six-season watch! Midnight, Texas a total hoot, with bonus threesome vibes!)

Thank you for listening. :)

ETA: You know, it's funny; when I was a kid, even through high school, having a crush on someone, whether an acquaintance or an actor, resulted in teasing, which pushed me to hide or deny or feel embarrassed. Now, thanks to fandom, I've grown more comfortable declaring things like this to the world. Past experience suggests there'll be others who either share the sentiment or empathize. No judgement.

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Bits and bobs

Tue, 18 Aug 2015 01:40:10 GMT

1.

I have mostly recovered from Vividcon. I think. Wed-Thu-Fri-Sat evenings I did things with people, and work is busy, so it's taken a while. Haven't yet watched most of the vids I missed, and need to respond to those of you who were kind enough to comment on the con report.

2.

Started one of the last readily available Paul Bettany movies this weekend, an English miniseries from 1998 called Coming Home. It appears to be about adopted families and class tensions and WWII and coming of age and love.

Baby Keira Knightley played the main character in the first part and she was adorable and had chemistry with everybody. Then she got replaced by baby Emily Mortimer playing the same character "two years" older*, because baby Keira Knightley I guess was too young to be shown kissing Paul Bettany, and as is usually the way with these sorts of things, it was hard to transfer affection from one actress to another. Emily Mortimer's face and hair here put me off.

*EM is 14 years older than KK

Funny how in the beginning of his film career PB seems to have gotten cast as either a gangster/hitman/street punk or a pretty love interest, or sometimes both at once. Here he is the love interest, or one of them; there is a love triangle I am pretending will end in a threesome even though it won't. ~~In fact, I don't think he's in the second half of the miniseries at all.~~ (ETA: Incorrect.) He spent a lot of time in the first half smoking cigarettes and looking apologetic for being so tall.

Despite the somewhat stilted acting and the preponderance of too-quick scenes that result from a book adaptation, overall it is a pleasant period drama (er, aside from one uncomfortable plotline that is over now) and I am looking forward to receiving the next hour and a half from Netflix.

3.

Tried a new Zumba class this evening. First time I've gone to a fitness class in a while, and it felt good. Will try to go again tomorrow, since it's only on the gym schedule Mon-Tue right now. thedeadparrot is inspiring.

After (re)watching Wimbledon as part of this marathon, I started to dream about playing tennis, which I haven't played in something like 10 years. It's too expensive and country-club-feeling to get access to the courts at work even with staff affiliation, and I don't think any local friends play with whom I could go use community courts--correct me if I'm wrong--but I found some tennis Meetup groups this weekend and plan to check them out when the timing and locations are right. Hopefully one will work so I can brush up on my skills without annoying my partner(s) and can add something different to the activity rotation.

(There hasn't been much activity at all lately, which doubtless explains why when I'm not at cons or neck deep in a work project, I've been feeling fairly blah.)

4.

It's hot. It's August. Alas. The good news is that when my mom comes to visit this weekend, temps are supposed to fall from 95 to 80ish. Better hope of good sleeping. If the weather holds, we will enjoy a treat: John Williams' Film Night on the lawn at Tanglewood (although due to an injury, Keith Lockhart will conduct in his place). The program was great fun last year at Symphony Hall.

5.

We shall close with a couple of video clips akin to what thedeadparrot and I saw on Saturday at an event called Ignite!, which involved fiery arts by members of the Boston Circus Guild such as flaming hula hoops and a flaming ball on a chain. Flaming swordfight and flaming whip were two of my favorites. There is something about controlled fire in the darkness that gets you right in the hindbrain. Here are some more clips, including a dude dressed like Petyr Baelish.

I'd like to say it nudged me toward working on the last Dustfinger fic, which will be OT4 that builds on the canonical m/m soulbonding, but there's too much else going on right now.

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Deep thoughts, with bironic handey

Fri, 24 Jul 2015 01:26:33 GMT

Book:

We are reading China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh for book club. (wiki) It's got excellent worldbuilding and a braid of engrossing character- and culture clash-driven stories, but the constant comma splices are driving me up the wall. There's at least one per page. Here is a sample passage:

I head north up Daqing Lu, the street is lined with stores. I stop and look in windows, the prices are ghastly. I have some of my Baffin Island salary on credit plus a stipend from the University. Because I study technology, my only cost was getting here, the rest is scholarship. Getting here was expensive enough.

Really not my style. It has to be deliberate style; there are too many of them to be editing errors. Although my copy does have a handful of typos as well, like "peal" for "peel" (twice), or, ironically enough, missing commas, as in "Hainandao. The name means South Sea Island. The first character, 'hai' means 'sea.'" It's enough to make it read like a self-published novel, grammatically, except for how it won the Tiptree award and was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula and was published by Tor/edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden. Strange.

TV:

Started watching Agent Carter after seeing the adorable dubsmash war clips from Hayley Atwell and James D'Arcy on Twitter/Tumblr. Have now seen the first three eps with a fellow fan's help. Quite enjoyable. High production values, unsurprisingly, and, as people like no_detective promised, solid, women-driven storytelling. I'm only surprised not to be enjoying buttoned-up Jarvis more as Peggy's boy Friday. Maybe I like my D'Arcy ruffled and smiling in a t-shirt. However, I did relish the scene where he put on glasses and stitched up Peggy's leg. Peggy is fabulous. She should hang out with Phryne Fisher.

Movie:

In less exciting news, we have achieved a new low in the dwindling Paul Bettany project: Mood Swingers, apparently a.k.a. Dead Babies. Bleh. Body horror and unsexy nudity and hallucinations and recreational drugs and occasional manic editing and general grossness and I just, not my thing. A little like David Cronenberg without deeper meaning and with low production quality. No, I can't even make that comparison; I probably only watched about 10 minutes total, fast-forwarding through the rest, whereas Cronenberg's stuff is good, if hard to watch. It wasn't just the teeth falling out and the barf and the needles and the entrails and the peeing and the tedious dialogue and the boobs, it's that it wasn't good. Compare to, say, DC's Crash, or Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream. Rather: no comparison.

Two decent visuals: Young, lean Paul Bettany wearing lipstick in one scene and playing badminton in another. The latter was edited in such a way that he probably only had to actually hit the shuttle twice, but his follow-through was elegant.

*shakes head at self*

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Part 6: I can't believe I'm still doing this.

Wed, 15 Jul 2015 23:47:46 GMT

How about some more Paul Bettany movies?

Previously:

Post 5: Transcendence, After the Rain, Creation, Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang) (not that one, the other one)
Post 4: Firewall,* The Heart of Me, The Da Vinci Code, The Tourist, Blood
Post 3: A Knight’s Tale, Margin Call,* The Secret Life of Bees, Mortdecai
Post 2: Wimbledon,* A Beautiful Mind, Legion
Post 1: The Reckoning, Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World,* Inkheart,* Priest
*includes fic recs

( Every Woman Knows a Secret )

( The Young Victoria )

( Dogville – long discussion, major spoilers )

( Dogville Confessions )

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