minutia_r

- I aten't ded, I just haven't been able to log on to tumblr for days. I miss it! I have been able to look at people's blogs, but it's not the same.

- I got the most wonderful Tuuri & Emil epistolary fic (with a few bonus letters between Emil and Lalli) for yuletide! It has friendship! Language acquisition! Background details about people's lives and jobs and preparations for the next expedition and such! You should definitely check it out if you're in the fandom and haven't yet.

- In the spirit of "Tuuri and Reynir are okay and they're going to be okay nothing's wrong what are you talking about", I did a shippy little watercolor, which you can see ( under the cut )

So, after seeing Attack on Titan start to crop up all over my tumblr dashboard, after several writers I like started writing for the fandom, and several artists I like started drawing for it, after gathering that it was about heroism and self-sacrifice and brothers-and-sisters-in-arms and buckets of angst, I said to myself, self, maybe you should watch this thing, and then you could participate in this seemingly-awesome fandom.

Then I didn't do it because I find it kind of difficult to fit watching tv shows into my schedule.

But I have finally gotten around to watching the first six episodes, and, okay here is the thing.

I love protective older sisters with kid brothers, okay? It is a narrative kink of mine. Protective older sisters who are nevertheless kind of douchey to their kid brothers? YES PLEASE. So although Eren is a character type that I ordinarily could not give two fucks about, and Mikasa's character type is only marginally more interesting to me, they had this great thing that I really like going on, right?

Let me tell you how much I hated episode six!

Oh, so Mikasa's backstory is that her parents were killed and she was kidnapped by sex slavers? Really, show? Did we really have to go there? Oh, and Eren saves her? By killing two grown men with primitive weaponry when he's like, six? Because he's apparently that much of a badass, since fucking when? While she is tied up and helpless, REALLY? Okay, so she kills the third guy (after a rousing speech from Eren) but still.

. . . Oh, wait, he saved her from rapists, that means it is TRUE LOVE, doesn't it. Fuck you, show, fuck you a lot. Why did you have to promise me this thing I like and then turn it into this thing I hate?

(And the thing is, I like sibling incest! I do! But I like it when it is sibling incest, not when all the sibling feelings have been erased with the magic wand of heteronormative stereotypical gender role romance.)

So, Pixar’s Brave.

Opinion has been divided on the issue: Either it’s going to be awesome and the art looks awesome and Merida is kickass and awesome, or it’s troubling that the only story about a girl that’s worth telling is the one where she wants to do boy stuff.

I am mostly in the first camp. Mostly because the art actually does look awesome. (Seriously, you had me at promotional tapestries.) Also, I love stories about princesses with swords (or in this case, bows and arrows) and always have; I will eat that shit with a spoon. (Also, it’s not like there aren’t a ton of Disney movies about a girl who does want to marry the prince and does marry the prince. Which is great and I love many of those too.)

But, well—why is it that “plucky girl defies her parents and rejects all suitors in order to become a warrior” is inherently interesting, and “plucky girl defies her parents and rejects all suitors in order to become a nun” is not? I guarantee you the second one has been a lot more common throughout history, in any culture where “nun” or some equivalent was a thing.

Partially I think it’s a discomfort with religion, or an inability to tell stories about religion without being evangelical, which is kind of silly—I read stories about violent people all the time while not being violent myself, why should I have to be religious in order to read about religious people?

(Disclaimer: I am religious. But there have never been Jewish nuns.)

But it’s also—if you want to tell a story about nuns, people will say, “Okay, but why should I read this? What makes it interesting?” Whereas if people are hitting each other with swords, you don’t have to ask; of course that’s interesting. (People kissing is also interesting, in the junior leagues of interesting that include “interesting to girls”.)

I dunno, maybe I should go read some literary fiction or something. But … most of it’s not very interesting?

So I'm starting to think that the hunt in the story I'm writing should be a partridge shoot, and not a fox hunt.

Upside: I don't have to write horses!

Downside: I have to write guns.

So I'm looking through the list of yuletide fandoms, and one of them is Beauty and the Beast (the Disney movie). Well, okay. It seems the requester only requested two characters: the Beast, and Gaston. Now, as far as I know, I am the only person on the internet to have written Beast/Gaston--I'm certainly the only person on AO3 to have done so.

I'm choosing to believe--and it doesn't seem that far-fetched--that this person is a fan of mine, and in fact liked A Different Story so much that they used one of their yuletide nominations in hopes of getting more like it (though not necessarily from me, obviously).

Score! If you're reading this, random internet person, thank you! You have warmed the cockles of my heart!

River Song = Renesmee Cullen

Discuss.

So my subconscious has been coming up with crack pairings in my sleep again. This time it was Christopher Chant/Agatha Heterodyne.

I can . . . almost see how that might work.

Also Arthur and Molly Weasley were there; I think they were Christopher and Agatha's chief henchmen. Apparently even my subconscious wouldn't dare break them up.

Oh, good, you're up! What do you mean, it's two o'clock in the morning and you're going back to sleep? Don't be silly! You have a story to write!

No, not the story you've been working on for the past week. A different story. And you're going to write it backwards. Chop chop!

*sigh* Please believe me when I say, FUCK YOU, MUSE.

I've previously mentioned that the logical smushname for Conrad/Christopher is Conifer; yesterday it occurred to me that the logical smushname for Mordecai/Rosalie is Morosely.

How can anyone not love smushnames? They're so much fun.

In other news, I had to cut the following Tom Swifty out of chapter 3 of my WIP:

"So would having a husband who drinks all his pay when he's got small children at home," said Rosalie dryly.

I can't . . . I can't really justify that.