I'm just here...

accioslash requested that I save Thicker Than Water for santas_lap, since that fest wasn't getting a lot of love this year, so I've made it my first entry into the fest. Finally, my LLM fic is delivered only 11 months late. Please heed the warnings!

In other news, anyone wanting stuff from Antemortem Arts or my Etsy shop can mention this post and get 20% off through tomorrow (as a refund).

But really, I POSTED FIC!

\o/

I just realised my last post (before the wishlist thingy) was over a month ago!  So updates....

• The TB test was positive.  Really, Wtf.  Even the Dr's we've seen were Wtf, where'd you get that from?  Fortunately not in a contagious state, but still needs treating.
• Am working on ABP.  Really!  I am determined to get an update out before the end of the year.  And hopefully get back to some kind of posting schedule after that.
• Was rationing meds.  Got that problem fixed for the year.  Feeling better. 
• Tramadol increased from 90 per month to 240 per month.   Feeling much better.
• I did 2 holiday fan exchanges (Snarry holidays and Snapely holidays)!  Got them both in way before deadline.  And I don't hate them!  (A couple flaws jump out at me of course, but I think that's normal for artists).  Digital art, but I'm hoping this translates to more inspiration for actual painting on canvas. 

This makes me insanely happy--

Santa Claus is Coming Out.

Santa and Geppetto! Who knew?

I've been pretty conflicted about posting my wishlist; on one hand its something of a fandom/lj/lj-clones tradition, and although many people try to grant wishes, its not a required or expected part of making the list.  On the other hand, im really ashamed that I screwed up with Holiday wishes last year.   I don't even remember who I promised to send stuff too last year (can't look back at my emails because there was a computer mishap) I could explain about all our medical and financial and family crisises but I don't want to focus on the negative and I doubt you'd enjoy reading it either.
If I promised you something last year, please let me know, and I'll try to make it right this year.
( Read more... )

We went down to Salinas to J's sister's new place, and holy crap is it huge. It's got a nifty layout, and infinitely more space than their old house. We hadn't seen Natalie since before she was walking so it took a while for her to stop giving J and I the suspicious eye, but by the end of the night it was lots of carry-me arms, and where Sophie is usually all about her Uncle J, somehow this time I ended up with her hanging on me more often than not. I suspect it was that I was wearing a pink shirt so that boosted my coolness rating. It's interesting to see the ways her personality has changed now that she's a big sister. Sometimes I wish we lived a bit closer in order to visit more often.

Anyway, we hung out, ate food, played with dolls, tried to devise a plan to steal their adorable pug, and at the end of the evening I got the bonus of belated b-day gifts. See subject. I have also increased my fuzzy scarf collection by one, so I should probably put out some of the ones I don't wear often out onto the curb.

The drive was nice, and J and I talked a lot about the ways in which we'd like to focus on our projects for school and general creative things. I'm back to having a solid idea of where to go with my current assignments so I'm feeling very rejuvenated about them. Which is good, as I need to be doubly-focused this weekend, since I didn't actually get any extra days off, and the lab is closed tomorrow which is typically my dedicated time to go in and work all day on my homework!

bulletpoints!

- Although I managed surprisingly well on cards last year, there's no way I'm going to manage this year. I'm slightly bummed about this, but I think I'll just resolve to send more random letters throughout the year as that's way more fun to receive.

- I made adorable cupcakes at work again. I wish I had an excuse to make them at home, or a whole lot more people to foist them off on.

- The last two episodes of Fringe made me all excited and giddy, even with a brief Not Sure If Want moment in there. I need to get over my tendency to want to fit things neatly in canon and just write the smushy porn that I want to write.

- There is absolutely no way to reply to an anon thread with you as the subject without a) being a dick, b) encouraging the drama, and c) being a dick. I replied anyway.

- There is absolutely no way to blog/tweet/mention replying to an anon thread with you as the subject without encouraging the drama and being a bit of a dick, but it made me laugh. Oh, people.

- I had this big complicated adventure dream with JDM in it last night. It was awesome. Then I had to get up and go to work, which was less awesome, even though our new brunch cook made me Huevos for breakfast.

- Speaking of our new cook, she's been teaching J how to make stuff. Including this awesome grilled tomato salsa which is downstairs right now, calling to me. She's the best.

- I severely need a nap, but if I sleep now I'll wake up at the time which I should be going to bed. Conflict.

In the form of a list!

• Deadline to sign up for a holiday card from me is December 7 -- that's when the art supply place claims it will deliver my blank cards, heh.


• I launched my fine art site and totally forgot to tell y'all -- Antemortem Arts is open, and I've even put stuff in my Etsy shop.


• I have exactly 3 pieces of fan art left to do, and then those commitments are fulfilled. Since they're all due for Xmas (2 HP Holiday Card Exchange cards, and my own HP Xmas card), I'll be all done by the end of the year. Weird!


• I found betas for accioslash's LLM fic, and it will be posting in santas_lap along with the Sirius/Neville I still have to finish, oops.


• I've been making some quiet writing progress on various things, including a certain person's incredibly belated prize fic (one more scene and it's done!), a chapter of the no-longer-New Thing that I probably ought to post to swtalmnd_nano, and little dribs and drabs to my other three WiPs that aren't for any fest or person or anything.


• Coconut Cocoa Tea ftw.

Title: Owned
Rating: Adult
Summary: The Malfoys have always been owned by the Potters. HP/DM. Deathly Hallows compliant although the epilogue is ignored.
Warnings: Slavery, dominance/submission, slash, angst, romance. Since this story spins off of canon, Harry's in a relationship with Ginny when we begin.
Disclaimer: Based on JK Rowling's Harry Potter works, the full canon except the DH epilogue. No infringement intended and not for profit.
Feedback: Yes, please.


---- This story is based on a prompt provided by lothy.
---- Latin incantation and translation provided by fabula_rasa.
---- Owned banner art by quill_lumos.
---- Thanks to triomakesmehot, quill_lumos, hogwartshoney and clauclauclaudia for the feedback and valuable comments.

( Continue Reading )

So, today Trina wanted me to share with her some of my favourite music videos from when I was a kid. The first one I thought of was Too Funky by George Michael.

I played it for her and she asked me, then, why it was a favourite. I sat there awkwardly for a while, not quite able to explain it. My favourite was the model in the metal bikini suit thing. Embedding was disallowed. I still love this vid. After, I showed her Jeremy and Black Hole Sun. Then I showed her Schism, which she thought was cool, and Thunderkiss '65, which led to a very short viewing of Beavis and Butthead so she could understand the context in which I first saw the video.

Listening to Too Funky also makes me want to write porn again.



What are your favourite music vids?


Also, I snuck over to fanficrants today for one reason and another and was struck but the plethora of crap. I mean...most of my rants consist of "use the right word, plz" and "get a beta before I spork my eyes" and stuff like that. Though, I don't usually make posts about it. I just think it. REALLY HARD. I get rants about subtle bigotry/misogyny/etc within fics, but for other things, sometimes I just want to say stfu and read something else. I mean...isn't this what google chat is for? Bitching to your friends about stupid shit you've read but are too polite to comment on, and in that fashion, in public?

Spam! Wrote this not long after TDK came out but never posted it. Since the evil twin just wrote Joker/Scarecrow with similar elements, I knew I had to post it as the same time as hers or I'd never do it. Team Porn does Arkham. Arharhrh.


The Frayed Ends
Batman. Batman/Joker. R. ~1000 words. Nolanverse. Violence.
Darkness gathers into a swarm around them and Bruce doesn’t want to let the bastard take one more goddamn breath.


( Read Me. )

Just a little something to get me in the groove for doing homework. Done without access to my usual brushes so there are several big things that make me go DDDD:, but I didn't want to spend more than an hour on this. Warmup means warmup, Pondy.

Avengers. Steve/Tony. G.



( Steve & Tony Warmup Drawing )

Attended a benefit dinner last night with J, maiki, and Susan for a non-profit that we've done a lot of work for. Materials that both Susan and I had designed were all over the place and it was really nice to see it all out and looking snazzy. Susan's done a lot to get their informational materials/reports looking clean and professional. I did the benefit's programs, invites, and carried over from last year was a set of promotional posters which I'm still proud of. The project, per usual, made me gnash my teeth at times, but I do enjoy working for them, and it was flattering when people whom I didn't expect compliments from told me they were impressed by the invitations in particular. :D Leading up I had this worry about the pagination on the program booklet since I worked entirely remotely and never saw a proof (or even had time to run one myself!) but everything turned out beautifully and typo-free. By this point, I've done enough recent work to have a solid design portfolio again, so with so few classes left ahead of me it's nice to have that in addition to what's shaping up to go on my reel.

I didn't mingle much, as J and I were introduced to some great people early on and there was no incentive to bother straying away from the interesting conversation to rub elbows with people outside my industry. It was somewhat fascinating attending something like this after so long, and also after now having worked on catering from the serving end! The appetizers, by the way, were awesome. I wish we offered some of them on our own menu, especially the warm cranberries and almonds in phyllo cups. Yum.

My shoes were remarkably comfortable. I haven't worn actual heels in forever and it's nice to confirm that my knee can handle hours standing around in 3" heels.

This was supposed to be anon commentporn, but then it wasn't fulfilling what the OP had asked for so I wrote it for Blue instead.

Boys' Club
X-men RPS. Hugh Jackman/Liev Schrieber/Taylor Kitsch. NC-17. 3400 words.
God, tonight he'd be a slut for it if that's what they wanted.

( Read Me. )

Aaand, belatedly, we have the last of the mini-commissions! RL trickled down to screw up my past few weeks, so they took longer than intended, but they're ready go go out with tomorrow's mail. All of my commissions lists are officially closed at the moment, as of this posting. Whee!

( Snape and Harry Fluff Redux )

Written for the 2009 startrekbigbang

Title: For The Greater Good
Author: Meri
Artist: votaku
Fanmixer: votaku
Series: ST XI
Characters/Pairings: Ultimately Kirk/McCoy but Kirk's got to get there first. Kirk/Uhura and Kirk/Spock happen along the way. Kind of. Spock/Uhura.
Warnings: There are issues with consent.
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: +/- 28,000
Beta(s): regan_v, bethbethbeth, and gnomad
Disclaimer: I would not presume to suggest that I own anything connected to Star Trek. I'm using the characters without permission and I'm not making any money on them.
Summary: Aliens make Kirk think he's had sex with three members of his crew. Much to his surprise, the person it meant the most with was not the person he would have guessed. Now all he has to do is convince that person he's serious, deal with the other two people with whom he shared this experience, and negotiate with the aliens who did this to him. No problem.
Note 1: As you can probably tell, the scene in the bar in Iowa is a paraphrase from the novelization of the movie. I'm using it without permission.
Note 2: Vokau is Vulcan for remember.
Note 3: Special thanks to Neotoma for answering my questions on genetics.


For The Greater Good

Art and Fan mix by Votaku

The Piano Forest (Piano no Mori) (Perfect World of Kai) (2007) # Genres: drama, tournament. Themes: music, piano. Status: OVA (101 min) Anime Start/End Chapter: Starts at Vol 1, Chap 1. Ends at Vol 6, Chap 41. Director: Masayuki Kojima Summary: Amamiya Shuuhei transfers to Moriwaki elementary filled with hope and ambition. But it doesn't take long before he gets picked on by the class bullies, and gets involved in a dare to play the mysterious piano in the forest. Igniting his meeting with an equally enigmatic child that goes by the name of Ichinose Kai, who seems to be the only one capable getting sound out of the thought to be broken piano. Found: saw it shared in some anime comm and thought the summary looked intriguing. Manga BU page. Mangaka: Isshiki Makoto Genre: Comedy Drama Seinen Slice of Life Status: 17 Volumes (Ongoing), scanlation ongoing. Summary: from KEFI: A tranquil tale about two boys from very different upbringings. On one hand you have Kai, born as the son of a prostitute, who's been playing the abandoned piano in the forest near his home ever since he was young. And on the other you have Syuhei, practically breast-fed by the piano as the son of a family of prestigious pianists. Yet it is their common bond with the piano that eventually intertwines their paths in life. Download: I've watched it at Youtube.

My notes: I must say it at the very beginning that contrary to my usual way of getting familiar with a new animanga, I haven't read the manga this time. I only watched the anime, so please take into account that everything I'll be saying is only about the anime.

This is a pleasant story: while not action/adventure, it has enough plot to keep your attention, especially around the climax. The boys are likeable. Kai's pretty wild and brash but also kind and has this inner purity and honesty that sometimes accompany raw talent and that influence people around him. I liked his practical reasons for learning things. He can't read score; he plays what he has heard. Once he found that he couldn't reproduce a particular piece of Chopin's, he plays scales to learn to play this particular piece, not because one must learn scales first, nor to become a good pianist in general. And so on. I absolutely adored his literal-mindedness about Mozart. The crowd of Mozarts made me laugh every time they appeared. In other words, Kai is lovely and very refreshing. Shuuhei is a bit more boring because he's very straight-laced for a boy his age and he plays the piano for all the wrong reasons, but doesn't it often happen this way? The two boys meet and gradually change each other. The best about their relationship, as for me, was the ways it didn't go. I can't say much more here but I liked how the dramatic side of it was downplayed rather than milked for all it's worth. It makes Piano no Mori a soothing story.

I think animation and drawing are good. I hear that the main problem people have with the manga is the drawing style. Am not able to say anything about that yet but I can't see what's not to like in the anime, if to speak of the visual side. It's neither cheap nor banal, and it's the only anime so far where a character playing the piano didn't make me cringe.

This leads me to why I give it only one star if I like everything. Not quite everything, as it turns out. You see, it's piano this and piano that, piano this and piano that. In more coherent speak, the story is fine and lovely but, I don't know, very narrow. Not unlike Hikaru no Go. But HnG was much more emotionally affecting and the story was much bigger than just about Go in the end. It sort of turned me inside out, made me live it for months. Here somehow I didn't have the impression that the story is bigger than the main theme. Pleasant? Yes. Interesting? Yes, enough. Can I relate? Nope. Apart from that, I repeat, it's a lovely story. I doubt you'd regret spending 1.5 hours on it, so give it a try!

*Sorry if you have seen some (a lot) of this post before. I accidentally posted the draft :/

Part 3 of my Japanese music favourites. Today's topic is J-Rock. As usual, some songs are more rocky than others and the range is from Speed Metal to Pop-rock to anything I've found similar enough or fitting, with a generous dash of anime music and some hip-hop. It just means that on the whole, today's selection is gloomier and heavier than the two before it. I've shared three of these songs with you already but not the rest of them.

Files are uploaded to Box.net, which means that you can listen to them before/as well as download(ing). Box.net tends to mess up the sequence of the uploaded files, so I've added links to each song as well as to the folder. I did make it with the proper sequence in mind, so that one song flows into the other smoothly. But in any case, hope you like a few of them! So, with thanks to lyssaphra and kyuuketsukirui for sharing music with me, on to the music!

*Nitemare and Nightmare is the same band. I just kept the song tags as they were :)

Song title Length Singer/Band Album (where it was already in the tags)

Crucify My Love 4:36 X Japan
Curtain Call 5:34 GLAY Beloved
Wind 3:40 Akeboshi STONED TOWN
Kenji 3:51 Fort Minor The Rising Tied
I.V. 4:55 X Japan Saw IV OST
Moshimo Piano ga Hiketa Nara 3:53 Plastic Tree Baka ni Nattanoni
Jisatsu Ganbou 4:39 Due le quartz Best of Due le Quartz
Eternally Beyond 4:25 Moi dix Mois Beyond the Gate
Brave Love: Galaxy Express 999 5:16 The Alfee
Dancing Yooderu Night (Leorio) 3:36 Gouda Hozumi Hunter X Hunter Singles Collection
The World 3:47 Nightmare Death note anime soundtrack
Haiiro no Hitomi 4:24 Shiina Ringo & Kusano Masamune Utahite myouri [disc 1]
Shangri-La 4:37 Angela Soukyuu no Fafner OP/ED Single
Again 4:15 YUI FMA:B 1st OP
D-tecnoLife 3:53 UVERworld D-tecnoLife
Monochrome no Kiss 4:00 SID Monochrome no Kiss (Kuroshitsuji OP)
Coming Closer 5:14 L'Arc~en~Ciel Smile
Kaze no Uta 3:40 Motoda Minako Hunter X Hunter Singles Collection
Kasou 5:09 L'Arc~en~Ciel
Bokutachi no Yukue 4:33 Takahashi Hitomi Bokutachi no Yukue
Alumina (Tv size) 1:13 Nitemare Death note anime Soundtrack
Desire 4:24 Luna Sea Style
Hologram ANIME Ver. 1:41 NICO Touches the Walls Hologram (FMA:B OP)
Talkin' 2 myself 4:53 Hamasaki Ayumi Talkin' 2 myself
MY LONELY TOWN 3:38 B'z
Drink It Down 2:51 L'Arc~en~Ciel Trailer Rip
Blessing 4:34 FictionJunction YUUKA Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto Intro Theme - Koya Ruten OP/ED
Still Doll 3:20 Kanon Wakeshima Vampire Knight
Shinkai no Kodoku 3:58 Kuwashima Houko Kidou Senshi Gundam SEED DESTINY ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK II
God Knows... 4:38 Hirano Aya, Goto Yuhiko Oricon 2006-07-03 Single Weekly Best 30
Rolling star 3:09 YUI Rolling star
Kimi Dake wo 5:26 Spitz Crispy
Ain't Afraid to Die 7:15 Dir en Grey Ain't Afraid to Die
Kaze ni Fukarete 4:16 Elephant Kashimashi Ashita ni Mukatte Hashire -Tsukiyo no Uta-
Separation 4:49 Angela Soukyuu no Fafner OP/ED
Memorial Address 3:56 Hamasaki Ayumi Memorial Address
Forever Love (Acoustic Version) 7:54 X Japan X

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