Monday, December 27, 2004

sng

Damn you, blogger, and your post-eating ways.

None of the original Boffo crowd can cook, but they all know how to make martinis. None of the second generation or expanded universe lot can cook either, aside from Carly. This is because they are all RAGING ALCOHOLICS and can't be bothered to feed themselves anything other than take-out.

I kind of want to make James go to Rutgers, just so I can make him eat at the Greasetrucks. I'm sending Tristan to Harvard, and I'm sure Jim will end up at Hampshire...no idea where Carly goes, or what any of them study. *shrug*

In my head, Theron and Brenon keep having shouting matches. Theron sulks, and Stella thinks he's very strange for doing so. Razhia wonders why she didn't drown them all at birth because she so saw this coming, particularly when Theron starts accusing Brenon of liking Stella better- which he does, coincidentally enough.

Also in my head, Kiba can't decide if he'd rather marry Hinata to keep Neji from making her miserable, or if he'd rather marry Shino, because Shino gets rid of fleas. I *heart* Kiba. He's deliciously straightforward- scratch him behind the ears, and he's your friend forever. Shino only speaks in emoticons around Kiba- he has a whole bag full of 0_o and -_- and ._. to use whenever Kiba speaks. Hinata just blushes, but she makes lunch for both of them all the time.

I can't get a handle on Kakashi unless I include the voices in his head- there's three or four of them, and they argue all the time. Kakashi's thoughts on Iruka tend to go something like this-

(I think he's nice, and he's got a kind smile. Nobody else is that nice to us.) (He'll end up dead. You know he'll end up dead, you've managed to kill everyone else.) (That's not true! Stop bringing that up, it was an accident-) (Once is misfortune, twice is coincidence, three times is get a fucking clue-) (We like him.) (I like girls!) (...) (...) (...sure you do.) (WHA-) Shut. Up. I hope you all know that nothing you say is going to affect my actions in any way, because I'm ignoring all of you. (This does not explain why you won't just jump his bones already.) Still ignoring you. (Girls!)

I don't know if this just means Kakashi is batshit, or if it means Obito was schizo, too. Either way, the arguments tend towards the hilarious or the really, really sad- they're more amusing the older Kakashi is, since his childhood was just a heaping pile of angst. Iruka's thoughts on Kakashi are fairly simple- "Kill him, molest him, kill him, molest him...fuck, I'll just flip a coin." My Iruka is so out of character it isn't even funny- he's just as screwed up as Kakashi is, but he's much better once he's medicated. After Tsunade drugs him like whoa, he stops being so full of angst and abuse and actually relaxes for a bit. My Iruka is not easily embarrassed, but he is more high strung than an inbred yappy dog. He just internalizes all of his stress, which leads to tension migraines and a very short temper. Ah, so much love.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Two for a funeral revision

Inevitable, when someone dies:
These two suspect what no one will.
No culprit means they'll improvise
With practiced and unequalled skill.

The room they share is dim and cold
For reasons neither understands.
The first one sits, with uncontrolled
and nervous twitching in his hands.

The other leans: a prideful line
Against a distant slice of sky--
Their dark eyes knowingly define
The boundaries of truth and lie.

Suspicion lurks in every corner,
With darkness daylight can't dispell--
Then cheap clocks chime- a well paid mourner
Sings dirges in this cheap hotel.

The air between them fills with ire
And silence on a fraying thread
Is betrayed as both inquire
"Weren’t you once my only friend?"

excerpt from childhood revision

In winter we walked through Colonial Park
where dying roses pressed
their thorny fingers to the sky
And cross-country ski tracks made scars in the snow

In spring we played softball, flew kites in the park
and planted flowers in
the garden where my favorite trees
had just barely started to break out in green

In summer we spent our days by the canal
Or in the tennis courts
catching fish or playing games
While dreaming of sweet lemonade in the shade

In autumn we talked over bike rides and work,
about whatever came
to mind: unspoken apologies
To make up for missing my birthday each year.


Untitled and unfinished revision

Song of Prayer

A friend and I were walking when we saw
Him Fall. He started as a speck of dark
No larger than a leaf, but grew into
A screaming meteor that tore the earth
To shreds. She ran back home to find the priest,
The mayor, and the coroner-- no man
Alive or dead could have survived a fall
Like that. I stayed behind to watch
Over the pit and better see its contents.
What little I could see of him from where
I stood was beautiful, though shattered earth
And broken soil obscured my view. He had
A body formed so perfectly that death
And dirt could not conceal its symmetry;
Perhaps I fell in love a little as
I waited for my friend's return; perhaps
I wondered, as I stood, how harsh and cruel
For Heaven, to eject a man like this
So forcefully. At length my friend returned
With all The town in tow; they cried out "God
Protect us!" when they saw the crater in
The ground. The priest began to pray in low
And measured tones, salvation on his lips--
But maybe it was terror when his voice
Died in his throat. "Stay back!" a voice commanded
From beneath the rubble and debris.
The others fled and I alone stood firm
As inky wings unfurled to blot the sun.
He lived, despite his fall, and he was great
And terrible but I was unafraid--
For I had heard the music of the spheres
Within my dreams: the sweet and perfect tones
Of angels who have yet to fear the Fall.
And nothing sent from Heaven, Hell or some
Place yet unknown could ever shake my faith.
"Who are you, to look on me, who once
Ruled all the western skies and over earth
And man dominion held? To such as you
I am a god- to mortal worms like you."
His face was much less beautiful when pride
Traced every line and plane; and though his voice
Was much like thunder, I was unimpressed.
"If you once ruled the western skies and kept
Watch over men and all the earth, then I
Shall have no need to fear your wrath, as now
You hold dominion over nothing but
This broken ground. I saw you, demon, saw
You fall; as beautiful and terrible
As you may be, not even you withstand
The laws put down by He who made us all.
When thrown from Heaven's doorstep even you
Will hit the ground." His eyes were full
Of fire and pride and sparks that bit the air;
His voice was full of thunder, there was fury
In his stance. "How dare you speak to me
With caustic, foolish pride--" "I dare as one
Who loves her people and her God with strength
Beyond compare. So fear me, demon, fear
My faith and leave this place." He raised his hand
As if to strike me for my insolence
And still, I felt no fear. His beauty blinded
Me for half a moment and it seemed the earth
Stood still while even heaven held its breath.
His touch put fire and pain upon my soul,
His hands were like a brand around my neck.
The light was so intense that I was sure
I had gone blind but once the light had faded
I saw with clearer eyes the scars upon
His flesh where he had tried to choke me in
His claws. His skin was blistered, raw and torn,
Burnt away by heaven's ire. And as
I watched the markings spread until they hid
His awesome beauty like a foul and loathsome
Pox. "Now heed me, demon, listen well,
Before you lose your ears to listen with.
I've warned you once and that's enough, so do
Not think to cross me. Leave this place, go far
Away and never wander here again.
Your destination lies below; you've still
A long way yet to fall. So leave this place
Before I cast you down myself." My voice
Was weak with pain but still I stood unbowed;
My faith was stronger than his hateful pride.
His pride was wounded now, his beauty broken
By a girl who was no better than
W worm to him. I raised my arms, prepared
To do more than wound his pride should he not
flee from this cursed ground. He snarled in rage
But left in fire and sulf'rous smoke and screaming,
Roaring thunder. Nothing more or less than
Complete and jarring silence filled the field.
I spoke a hasty prayer of thanks upon
The jagged stones and made my way back home.
The scars he gave me have not healed, though years
Have passed since then. They say that I must be
A saint; perhaps they are correct. I do
Not know. But if I listen in my dreams
I still can hear the music of the spheres,
As angels sing their perfect love to God.

RAGE revision

Poet, be not daunted by the poems you cannot write:
A poet must work to find the words that flow.
Rage, rage against the rhyming that is trite.

And poet, though I know this thought fills you with fright,
Do not worry if your talent hits a plateau--
Poet, be not daunted by the poems you cannot write.

You may have reached a point where meter won't excite,
And then you must, to prove that you are still a pro,
Rage, rage against the rhyming that is trite.

When you are enduring absolute creative blight,
Oh, do not let this halt your song! And so,
Poet, be not daunted by the poems you cannot write.

Remember well those epics that describe the plight
Of ancient gods and heroes, battling long ago,
For they rage, rage against the rhyming that is trite.

Like those heroes, you must strive and fight
For a poem that will receive a cry of, "Whoa!"
Poet, be not daunted by the poems you cannot write.
Rage, rage against the rhyming that is trite.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

It's clear enough for a
Meteor shower,
cosmic falling flower,
superior astral power
if one hit you would you go ow or
would you explode in a blast of celestial light?

Orion's belt buckle
dropped off to the ground
with the tiniest sound
ever so shiny and round
It's hidden, obscured and unfound
By Orion, whose belt no longer holds up his pants.

Look and see the Milky Way
exhaust from astral cars
smoke from a thousand cigars
pornographic remnants of stars
the blood from deified martyr's scars
that think the stars aren't decorous enough for heaven.

Look and see Orion; it's clear enough.

Monday, December 13, 2004

song call- "Tuff Ghost"

tuff ghost, tuff crowd, tuff love
sit down sit down sit down
tuff ghost, tuff crowd, tuff love
sit down sit down sit down

say something now
say something now

the tuff ghost disappears for 3 days
the tuff ghost is set in his ways
i don't want to hurt you


GHOST
well you can't, 'cuz i'm already dead


the tuff ghost is invincible
no guts came out when he bled


GHOST
well i lift weights, but i don't sweat.
i go for a swim, but i don't get wet
i don't care about anyone else
i'm a strong dead man, looking out for himself


i think you're suffering, that's why you're so mean
you're already dead
i can't see right through
see right through
see right through
right through you

-the unicorns, "tuff ghost"

'Nother song off the Champloo FST, this one was for Mugen, but I think it describes Jin a little better. It's amazingly creepy- the Ghost voice is haunting but very matter-of-fact, and the lines "i don't want to hurt you/ well you can't 'cuz i'm already dead" make my spine try to crawl out of my back.

Delicious. Lyrics taken directly from the official website, hence the lack of capitals; all I did was fill in the places where it said to repeat things with the actual words. The Unicorns are pretty cool, all things considered. Creepy, but cool. Also Canadian. Creepy, Canadian, and cool. My new depressive music, I think; it's weird music, with strange synth melodies and the haunting voices. Little slices of auditory insanity- they're kind of like candy!

I like candy.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Song call and fic

Well you live with someone, but I know you're alone.
You're thinking about the way you were and it feels like missing home.
And you know there's a person that you wanted to be.
You many live with someone, someone in me.
You're doing something by keeping it bottled in.
You're stuck between giving out and giving in.
And you know what needs to be said
but you couldn't play the part
Cause you know what kind of trouble that starts.
And it's all too familiar and it happens all the time.
All the cards begin to stack up,
Twisting heartache into fine little pieces that avoid an awful crime.
But it's you I can't deny.
Everything is going, everything is good.
Every time I saw you, I knew you understood.
Well you know there's a person that you wanted to be.
You may live with someone, someone in me
And she's hoping that he'll fix it but it's more than just a stain.
She's got nothing left to dream of and her nightmares are the same.
She believes that every love could be a lie,
Saying, "You, I can't deny. It's you I can't deny."
It's you I can't deny. It's you.
-"Wedding Dress," Breaking Pangaea

Breaking Pangaea is a band I found out about because I saw a girl wearing a band shirt on the PVTA to Northampton last year. I could only find two mp3s- this one, and one for a song called "The Worst Part." I can't classify music these days- I can pretty safely say it's rock, but beyond that I have no clue.

Anyway, I like the song; I like its energy and its inevitability. Sometimes you just can't say no, you know?
------------------

The last line of this bugs the fuck out of me, because I know it's still half wrong. The rest of it is mostly right, I think. Irukaka, because Kakashi's too fucked in the head to be anything other than needy.
--
Untitled

There was just enough moonlight sliding through the window for Iruka to see the scars on Kakashi's shoulder. He traced them absently with lazy fingers. "You became a jounin at the age of ten, right?" His voice was soft around the edges with sleep. Kakashi grunted in reply, mostly asleep himself. "How many people have seen your face since then?"

The jounin's body tightened like a wire; Iruka felt it immediately, being draped across the slender man's back like a slightly sticky blanket. His hands automatically sought out knots of tension, instictively seeking to soothe.

"I'm sorry." He pressed his nose into the juncture of collar bone and neck, still trying to stroke the tension away with his hands. His curiosity was stealthier than his common sense, particularly on nights like this when he was warm and sated and curled around his lover. He usually managed to stop himself from asking stupid questions before they could ruin the mood. "You don't have to answer, it's none of my business."

Kakashi shifted beneath him, turning until they were face to face, their bodies fitting together like a pair of puzzle pieces. His eyes were closed but his fingers found the scar across Iruka's face by instinct, tracing it with feather touches. Iruka kissed the palm of his hand in apology.

His voice was low, and his hands stilled, resting on Iruka's cheekbones. His fingers ticked off the names against Iruka's face. "Tsunade. One healer nin. Sandaime. Three members of the Uchiha clan, all of whom are dead. Yondaime. Rin. Obito." He opened his eyes, the stolen sharingan lost in shadow. "You."

Iruka kissed him, fierce and possessive and too full of love for words.

December's Impossible Project: STATUS

A drabble is anything between 100 and 1000 words, but generally doesn't exceed 500 words. A fic is anything over 1000 words, but it must have some sort of plot or other structure. A fragment can be of any length but has no structure and no concrete plot of its own.

Character/character does not indicate pairing, it simply indicates the characters involved in the fic or drabble. Pairing is indicated by the combined name of the two characters, ie Kakashi/Iruka vs. kakairu. Character+character means only the first character is actually there, but the second character is important to the story.

Lists:
1 Hinata drabble (sometimes being able to see sucks like whoa)
1 Raito/L/Ryuuku drabble (L was right all along)
1 Leeji (oh, god, I crack myself up sometimes) fic (unfinished, untitled) (just close your eyes)
1 Shino drabble (it's almost enough)
1 Sasuke+Naruto drabble (you are too bright)
1 Naruto/Orochimaru fic (unfinished, untitled) (he would hate to see you like this)
1 Sannin/Team Kakashi/Team 7 fic (finished, "Spirals") (you're not as far from the center as you think)
1 Shino/Kiba/Hinata drabble (who died and made you king?)
1 Ino/Chouji/Shikamaru drabble (we're always hungry)
1 Aggregate fragment (*palmsmack*)
1 Irukaka drabble (let me trace the scars on your soul with my love)
1 Irukaka fic (unfinished, untitled) (for instance, you're also good at killing things. like the mood.)
1 Vagrant Story drabble (the rain is falling)
1 Tristan/Dee Boffo drabble (Damnit, Tristan, stop thinking inappropriate thoughts about your father figure! >_<) (the scars in your eyes pretend you are human)

So that makes 10 Naruto, 1 Death Note, 1 Vagrant Story, 1 Boffo, and 1 new original. 14 total. I'm still ahead of schedule! However, I can't really count those three unfinished fic (since I'm totally not finishing the Lee/Neji one, it's just too random, and I don't think I'll be able to finish the Irukaka one because they're too much like Setzer and Shadow for me to even think about it), so I need to get back on track and get further ahead of schedule.

I also need to stop writing Naruto because dude. That's enough. I should try to write something FF related.

Also, my writing kinks: shapeshifters, duality, voices in the head, and scars. If it changes shape, has an equal and opposite counterpart, lots of scars, and at least one other voice in its head that doesn't belong there, you know it's mine. (I am so predictable.)

Thursday, December 09, 2004

Aggregate of Dragons

Yeah, so, I can't decide what to call this thing other than "Aggregate of Something." Damn you, Emily Dickenson; it's an incredibly awesome word.

I could call it something cheesy like "Greater than the sum of its parts," but that's pretty awful, and Aggregate of Something sounds awesome. Whee.

This is another sf idea; I think it takes place on earth, but that could be changed pretty easily. This is a post-apocalyptic world that hasn't degraded into pre-civilization. Instead, a new world has risen out of the ashes of the old, and it's a beautiful world, filled with light and hope- or it was, until humanity came back into power. Now things are a little cleaner than before, but people are ultimately unchanged by their century or so of enslavement.

The Azhdekhai are dragons; in the mythology of my head, they're distant cousins to the Yrkhai (which sounds a little like Uruk-Hai, only with fewer syllables and more choking noises in the back of the throat), but they're the daughters of Tiamat rather than the Sons of Bahamut. They aren't actually all female, but gender isn't a concrete concept to them.

The dozen Azdekhai that inhabit earth have improved the place quite a bit; the first couple centuries of enslavement were just to get humanity used to their existence. Now they overlook things to make sure nothing especially bad happens, and let the world run itself. They're still the final authority in all things, however, and even if they don't directly interfere with anything anymore, there isn't a human alive who doesn't know it.

Aggregate technology is old hat for the Azhdekhai; they use it on all the worlds they colonize because they can't actually interact with lesser races without causing heads to explode. The Aggregates are normally just automatons, used to gather information and make decrees, but the Twelve found themselves experimenting a little with the technology and actually managed to create people.

An Aggregate is sort of a cyborg and sort of not; there are both mechanical and organic components to its make up (hence the name), but the end result is something that is actually alive. They're not immortal, they can bleed, and once the initial programming and processing is over, they don't resemble machines in the slightest.

Their cells are rearrangeable. Each individual component is a separate entity in and of itself, and each separate entity controls itself on its own. There's a sort of hive mind or working republic mentality to them; you may be speaking to what looks like an individual, but you're actually communicating with a few hundred million tiny individuals with the same goals in mind. Decisions are made by a simple majority ruling, and there's never any argument- the collective intelligence is often staggering, but the individual components are fairly primitive.

The self-aware Aggegates call themselves the Aggregati; it gives them an identity beyond being the tools of the Azhdekhai. They tend to be human in appearance, but their forms are completely arbitrary, depending on the number of points in their seals.

Yes, I do have an obsession with shapeshifters.

The seals are what hold an Aggregate together; without them, they're just a pile of squirming organic matter with no core intelligence or form. A single point seal is the strongest seal possible; it holds the Aggregate together to the point where next to nothing is going to make it fall apart. Single point Aggregati tend to be used for manual labor and nothing else; they don't have the flexibility that allows for greater intelligence, but they've got ridiculous amounts of stamina.

Humans also have single point seals that serve as passports. The Azhdekhai are all quite friendly with one another, but they're territorial and they like to keep track of their possessions. The humans born in their districts are given their mark three weeks after being born. It's become almost a secular equivalent to baptism; you aren't an actual person in the eyes of the law until you've been sealed, which is why infanticide and abortion are not illegal. (When people objected to this, the Azhdekhai killed them.)

The higher the number of seals, the more control an Aggregate has over his own components (grammar! "Aggregati" is the plural or the term for the whole race; individuals or the adjectival is Aggregate). So, Asha has a three point seal, which allows her the flexibility of intelligence and gives her moderate shapeshifting abilities. The three points in her seal allow for a certain amount of customization; generic three point seals have a bit more flexibility in their abilities than Asha's does. She can only control certain parts of her components; changing colors is easy, but the third point on her seal is to keep her shape whole while still allowing her to change gender. Sex. What the fuck ever.

Vaz has a twelve point seal because he was commissioned by one of the Azhdekhai. After the 12 pulled out of human affairs, they retired to giant floating palace things in the sky and spend all their time being pampered like whoa. They surround themselves with beautiful things and Aggregati (who sometimes count as beautiful things); Vaz was commmissioned solely to serve the pleasure of the Lord of the Eastern Skies (Number Seven to her family).

Don't get all pervy on me, all he did was recite poetry and play go. His Lord (tecnically a Lady) also occasionally used him for diplomatic things; she was very fond of him and he quickly rose through the ranks of her Aggregati to the position of her personal assistant. He attended summit meetings for her and made sure all of her affairs were in order on earth; he was commissioned with a ten point seal, but Seven upgraded him after a few years because she hated seeing him not reaching his full potential.

She sent him to live on earth for the same reason, and now she watches over him because it's more amusing than anything else currently going on in her life. Vaz can blend in with normal humans easily enough, and he outranks everything on the face of the planet (12 point seals are amazingly rare, and all of them aside from him are living with their respective Lords), but he still gets in trouble on a regular basis.

Humanity has gotten over the slavery thing, for the most part...but they don't like the Aggregati. Sure, they're useful, but they represent a lot of things that humans don't like- after watching a seven pointer demolish a building by calculating the weak points in the structure and hitting it with his fist, it's hard to remember which species is supposed to be superior. Never mind that another property of the seals on the Aggregati commissioned for human use is to make them incapable of outright disobedience (Three Laws Safe!) and also turns them into virtual slaves- humans are silly like that.

Vaz knows very little of the actual reality of his; his primary interaction with humanity was through diplomats, politicians, and scientists, all of whom are accustomed to dealing with upper level Aggregati and who know they can't afford to be prejudiced.

The Azhdekhai don't actually care about the Aggregati. So long as their personal property is treated well, they don't give a damn about the rest. So creatures like Asha are made and used, and creatures like Vaz are pampered and petted, and when those two worlds meet, crazy shit happens.

Vaz, aside from his authority, is crazy cool. He can do things with his body that most other creatures can only dream of. Spit poison? He can do it. Grow wings? He can do it. Eat things by absorbing them like an amoeba? He can do it. He has a twelve point seal, and that makes him nearly invincible.

He's an ass. A complete and utter ass. He also lived an amazingly sheltered life with Seven and the other isolated Aggregati in her palace. He knew all about violence (Seven liked watching him kill things), but he had no clue what emotions or sex were for. Asha, being a natural empath (talents like empathy and telepathy crop up in humanity every so often- the percentage is fairly small, something like one in every thousand; no one knows how or why the Aggregati occasionally develop psi abilities, but it doesn't happen often enough), throws him completely for a loop.

I think he meets her when she tries to escape the brothel she works in, and he gets caught up in a messy gang war. He finds that in the underworld, his pretty seal and ultimate authority don't mean shit; the Azhdekhai don't care about small scale things like that.

Fortunately for Vaz and Asha, he did spend more than half his life working as a gladiator, of sorts. He really likes killing things. Fortunately for the people around him, having sex eases his bloodlust, so it's a good thing he now has his own personal sex kitten.

Asha is sweet and utterly in love with Vaz; she lives to make him happy. Being an empath in a brothel- and being an empath Aggregate whose sole purpose was to serve customers who like a little sadism with their sex- wasn't at all fun for her, to put it mildly. In fact, one might almost say it was neurosis-inducingly traumatic.

Fortunately for Asha, some part of her enjoys killing things as much as Vaz does, and while she can't actually reform herself into something with giant teeth and claws, her stamina is second to none and she can take a hit and keep on kicking your ass. She and Vaz single handedly take down the organized crime in the area.

Then then go off to shag like rabbits and make babies. Babies everywhere!

Only they don't. But they will eventually.

I kind of wish I could draw Vaz because he's (fucking hawt) really, really awesome. His seal looks like someone stuck a garden all over his face and upper body (the more points in a seal, the bigger it is; Vaz's spreads across his shoulders and down his spine, as well as over his chest to his navel). It's purty. Vaz, in general, is purdy; it's rare for an Aggregate to look bad, since they're all engineered to be pleasing to the eye to begin with.

Where'd the idea come from? No fucking clue. It hit me on monday while I was eating dinner and I had to write it down. *shrug*
So, when I start out intending to write angst, why do I suddenly end up with snarkiness? Sexually frustrated snarkiness, no less?

I must say, that body-switch no jutsu thing really comes in handy; I wonder how strict the rules are about it. I mean, I know Iruka could switch himself with a pillow from across the room, but with a note on his desk across the city? Hm. If not, cool, because I can get rid of some of the snarkiness.

Kakashi, why the fuck are you such a clueless asshole?

Also, the nice thing about ninja is that even if you do lock them in a room together, there's no way they'll stay there for longer than a minute if they don't absolutely have to. They're ninja, after all.

Why am I still talking about Naruto? GRAWR. *stabs self in eye*

"I am more than my tendency to worry about my students. You, supposedly, are more than your ability to insult, bait, and otherwise piss off the entirety of the world around you. For instance, you're really good at killing things. Like the mood."

Oh, snarky Iruka. I love you so.

MORE naruto babble

Clearly Yondaime didn't actually die; he just ran away after sealing the kyuubi to become Cloud in Advent Children. YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE.

Also: when you see the words "Queen of Figaro" in the summary of a FFVI fic, do you or do you not automatically think "Edgar in drag" as opposed to "Edgar's wife"? Discuss.

And the reason I'm such a fan of Kakashi/Iruka? Because, in my head, they're actually Setzer and Shadow. Think about it- one's quiet and sensible, the other is weird and loud. One of them has silver hair and a scar over his eye. We've got the ninja thing covered from both sides. We've got the dead girlfriend/significant other/best friend/family angst, again covered from both sides.

They're insufferably cute when they're cute, and utterly vicious when they're not. (Particularly on Iruka's part, which means that my internal Iruka is more than a little out of character- he's mean when he gets tired of putting up with Kakashi's shit. He ought to be loud, not mean, but I have trouble with loud.) And Kakashi is just clueless, so very clueless.

Do I want to do a character analysis of Kakashi? Do I really? Probably. I don't think I'll do it right now- I'll just say that anybody who wears a face mask all the time and has done so since he was ten, if not earlier (probably earlier- I imagine he started wearing it after his father died), has got more than a few issues to deal with.

That's okay, though, because it means that I can have people make "faceless stranger" comments. It's a sign of how much I like Kakashi that I want to abuse him as much as I do in my head. :) I love how Naruto is full of so many adorable psychopaths. *happy sigh*

Okay, I'm done for now.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

more naruto babble

Okay, aside from the fact that I'm pretty bad at it because I just can't get other people's characters to truly live in my head unless I give them a permanent residence, and by then any stories they're living out aren't interesting to anyone but me, I don't write fanfic because sometimes I end up empathizing with characters that I want nothing to do with.

Take Orochimaru, for instance. He's a creepy fucking snake monster who takes over people's bodies. Fine. He hasn't got any redeeming qualities other than Kabuto, and I don't really like Kabuto. (That's almost a lie; I can't really decide whether or not I like him, but I know he creeps me out.) I can pretend that he wasn't an ass when he was a kid, but I'm sure he was; he just grew into a bastard who can regurgitate snakes at will.

This fic is starting to hurt; I don't like writing Orochimaru or depressed Naruto. The former squicks me on some level, particularly when he can't decide whether or not to be cruel to Naruto, and depressed Naruto is wrong on so many levels...And both of them are very, very wrong when they're sitting having a conversation about Sasuke. Because now I've got Orochimaru in my head, and while I don't mind snakes, this is getting a bit extreme.

Ugh. Next thing you know, I'm gonna be going OMG NARUTO/OROCHIMARU OTP!!!!11!1eleven. And then I'll stab myself in the eye. Just- bam! No more eye.

But, you know- what if Sasuke never comes back?

I hate the inside of my head sometimes.

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Song Post plus Fandom Wankery

I'm taking time out for reflecting
I'm going one on one with who I'd like to be
I'm leaning towards the sun
Watching flowers blossom all around me

I tried wailin' to a wall
Standin' like porcelain, mumblin',
Salt water rollin' down side burns,
Searchin' for the answers, handling the truth
Seein' it for myself is the only way
Forget a winner, stop being a sinner first
Ruining your liver, smoking cigarettes and worse
Love is a killer, the leading cause of suicide
How to survive a day in the life of times

[chorus]
I'll rock the vote not to hear you
Tell me that I'm watching too much T.V.
Then I'll hope that I can win with the lazy bones I'm livin' in
It's not my fault I wasn't chosen
I was focused in the open
I deserve so much better than this

I'm shooting airballs from the free-throw line
I'm batting lefty when I know that I'm alright
I'm reaching out for the sun
Being passed by shooting stars overnight

I been livin' with a small inner child
Antsy, I can't sit still for a minute
My shortage of concentration ruins meditation
And my motivation ain't shit
I need a way
My tolerance ain't what it used to be
Dollars make sense sellin' out for a fee
If I didn't have faith, could you still save me?
How to survive the lines we hate to lead

[chorus]

Fuck the future
I'm in the present plague
Can't be a loser, my girl won't stay
I don't know computers, I was sick that day
How to survive the mines we chose to lay

I'll rock you
alright...
Come on!
You can do better than that!
There you go.
[chorus 3x]
-Thicke, "Lazy Bones"

No words to describe how much I love this song; I've got a Naruto AMV to it that's just absofuckinglutely briliant, and I love it.
---------------------
Hey, if I count the bit about Vaz and Asha, I'm still on schedule with the drabble a day. I might even be ahead of schedule, which is cool. (Why is it always about sex, goddamnit? I need to get laid, fuckin' seriously.) Most of 'em are Naruto bits; I've got a Team 10 and a Team 8 drabble, a Sasuke-lusts-after-Naruto drabble, a two-sentence Hinata-is-a-little-bitter thing, a longer, unfinished Lee/Neji thing that mostly involves Neji humiliating himself and me trying to make subtle statements and failing, a longish set of successive drabbles that follow the spiral from the sennin to team 7 (called, originally enough, "Spirals" harr harr I r so clever), and a long, unfinished "Look, I made Naruto cry!" fic that also doubles as a getting-what-you-always-wanted-sucks story and triples as a "Wait, you can't do that to Sasuke" fic. Only I can do that to Sasuke, because I'm evil and because hey, it could happen. Y'all know it. (And then they all die, and my head explodes. Yes!)

Aaaand, of course, there's a saptastic bit of seme!Iruka and angst!Kakashi that I wrote today in verse writing because I didn't feel like being told that Africa was a big place. Jesus fuck, woman. The imagery that evokes scrubland or desert is practically the opposite of the imagery that evokes a jungle. The ground in a jungle doesn't crack, it squishes, because the definition of a jungle involes way too frickin' much rainfall.

And sue me, I prefer poems that evoke landscapes to those that have political messages. I'm a seasonal poet, after all. (Harr harr.)

Anyway. Saptastick IruKaka fluff makes me happy, because reading the Kakashi Gaiden chapters of the manga just cement this image of Kakashi as a prickly, needy, shy young man in my head. Prickly, needy, shy, and schizo, that is. Man, there were a few days there when I disliked him a lot for the pettiest of reasons- he was being nice to Sasuke and not beating the boy over the head. Now I adore him because he's an utter jackass.

And now I go into GIANT GEEKTASTIC FANDOM DISCUSSION mode, and talk about Iruka. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. In other words, I'm going to wank about my favorite character for a while.

I have a huge problem with the way fandom generally portrays Iruka- granted, it's just fandom in the areas that I read, so it's possible that he's portrayed in a less weeping-uke sort of manner with greater frequency outside of the yaoi fandom, but it irritates me. I like Iruka- he's a genuinely nice guy with a remarkably uncomplicated past and no ulterior motives- and the series has far too few of those. But nice does not equal weak, and it certainly doesn't equal effeminate. I haven't watched the anime, but I don't know how anyone could read the manga and come to that conclusion.

I hate the way fandom tends to portray him, but I still adore Kakashi/Iruka as a pairing, because it tends to be cute and fluffy, and I'm a sucker for cute and fluffy. But I hate it when Iruka is referred to as a "lowly Chuunin." Granted, he's the only adult in the series who isn't a Jounin who actually does stuff, which makes him seem a bit like he doesn't quite measure up, but the Chuunin exam arc made it pretty clear that you still rank when you're a middle ninja. It's not like the man's completely incapable of taking care of himself; if nothing else, he's got an amazing pain threshold- okay, so he got kind of royally thrashed in the fight with Mizuki in the beginning, but he was protecting Naruto at the time, so you can forgive him for not dodging a couple of kunai and a giant shuriken when the only other alternative was see the main character of the series snuff it within the first five chapters.

And even after getting turned into a pincushion, Iruka yanked the fucking shuriken out of his back, coughed up some blood, and told Mizuki to go fuck himself. I thought that was pretty badass, even if I am substituting some of my own dialogue into those speech bubbles.

I can accept that, compared to Kakashi or any of the other Jounin (or most of the male kids), he doesn't really measure up. But he's not weak and he's not unskilled (he has to teach this stuff, after all), and he's capable of taking care of himself- and if he can't take care of himself, then he's just as capable of accepting his fate. He's not looking for someone to protect him; he's got too much compassion to allow anyone to risk their own life for his.

(Why yes, I am making glaring assumptions here. I told you this would be full of wank.) I'm getting this mostly from the dead parents thing and the fact that he's a teacher (which also doesn't equal weak). If you're teaching children, then I have to assume you're either a) crazy, b) twisted enough to want to mold all those little minds to your own whims, or c) in need of something to protect and nurture.

Though now that I think about it, I mostly just get the feeling that he'd be irritated if someone tried to coddle him; he's not an idiotic teenager, he's an actual adult. I also get the feeling that no one in the series (aside from maybe Naruto) would be stupid enough to try, regardless of any romantic feelings. They're bloody ninjas, after all. Pretty much everyone in the series has a name on that stupid cenotaph that they care about.

Anyway. The "Help me I'm lonely please protect me" Iruka stereotype just pisses me off. Maybe he's a little more laid back in the anime, but in the manga he isn't shy about voicing his feelings or getting ticked off. Naruto doesn't automatically reduce him to a puddle of goo- he yelled at the brat pretty good when he was pulling pranks and being stupid. And Kakashi may have cowed him a bit in chapter 35, but he was being an ass and even Kurenai and Asuma saw him as being out of line. (Clearly if Kakashi is an ass to Iruka in one of the three interactions they have in the manga it means they're in luuuuv.) It seemed to me more a case of Kakashi being a scary bastard (which he is) and Iruka being outranked by his superiors.

I just don't see Iruka as the sort of person who would need or want a relationship in which he was the one being protected or coddled; like I said before, he's an adult and can take care of himself. But fic that makes him act like a wibbly idiot wouldn't bother me half so much if it didn't always portray him as effeminate.

Hello? What? Slender and delicate? Who? People need to stop looking at the Japanese porn because, dude. Kishimoto did not create an effeminate, waiflike design for Iruka. Kakashi is about an inch taller and three pounds heavier according to the official stats, which would give him a more slender build than Iruka. And really, I don't care how hard you squint, he's not going to look any girlier. The man is the opposite of girly, from his skin and hair color to the shape of his face. It just- gah! It irritates me. Yes, he's all caring and kind and compassionate and manly, damnit!

He's also not flamingly gay or completely innocent like some other characters(*coughcoughsasukecoughgaicoughcough*)- Naruto's sexy no jutsu did work on him, after all. And, once again, he's 25. He's not a kid, he just teaches them. And yes, he was blushing the first time he actually talked to Kakashi, but that's mostly because Kakashi was being an ass- as usual. He doesn't spent all his time blushing, it was just the once when they were talking about Naruto. >_<

So, yes. I like my Iruka strong, confident, snarky, and manly (rarr), and I like my Kakashi fucked in the head with a hefty side helping of jackass and confused. Together, they are unstoppable! ...okay, actually, they're mostly just hawt. But I can pretend, right?

Right. Maybe my next fanrant will be about Shino and how much he rawks the sawks. Awk. ...and stuff.

And, sweet chrisy, I love this feckin' song. *listens to it on repeat for the seventh time in a row* It's so perfect it hurts. "I'm batting lefty but I know that I'm alright..."

I guess

They say it's easy to write a poem on love
And easier still, on sorrow.
I know little enough of both,
But I know myself
well enough.
But if I can't write what I know,

I'll watch the white winter sunlight through the clouds,
And write you a seasonal poem.
I am only a seasonal
Poet, and Nature
Will forgive
My long term love affair with you.

She's good like that, doesn't make me feel guilty
When I don't call, doesn't mind that
I don't like bugs. (I hate how they're
cold, brittle, and small.)
I don't kill
them, and that's all she asks of me.

I cannot write a poem of love for you or
anyone else. How can I say
what I do not feel? I think I
forgot to tell you
my voice is
broken; it fell when we tried to

install it and no one wanted to get a
new one when we still had the chance.
Maybe we should have. I can't say
I love you, you see.
I might have
but it's so hard to know. I am

Sorry for cleaning the dust off your desk when
there was nothing left for me to
clean In my own room. Well, there were
those dark and dirty
corners of
my heart. I should have swept those first,
I guess.

Monday, December 06, 2004

Aggregate of Fireflies

"What do you want here?" The tall student tilted his chin up defiantly. He was surrounded by a group of flunkies, blocking the screens. There were five of them, three boys and two girls. They looked very angry and very young.

Vaz sighed. It would be wrong to rip the boy's throat out, and he knew it would be wrong. So he refrained for the time being and bowed instead. "I'm looking for my test scores and those of my friends who could not make it to the board today. Please move aside so I may find them."

The tall boy sneered but moved. Vaz surveyed the screens, picking out his number and Asha's; once again, they'd both scored at the top of the class, but their scores were segregated from the humans' along with the other Aggregati.

"Whatcha lookin' at that screen for, geshu?" The friendly term was spat like an insult. "You an Ag-lover?"

Vaz looked at the tall boy with carefully blank eyes. "Should it matter? Or should I ask what you scored? It seems the Aggregati students, as a whole, did better than the humans."

"We just don't want our air dirtied by some Ag-loving piece of trash." A shorter girl spat on the sidewalk; her face would have been pretty if not for the ugly sneer on it.

Vaz shifted his bag against his shoulder so the buttons on the strap showed more prominently. If they were as clueless as they seemed, it might help to hit them with a clue-by-four.

"Sst! Lookit the buttons- he is an Ag-lover!" The taller boy narrowed his eyes at the subordinate who spoke but then turned his glare on Vaz.

"I've seen you hanging out with that new trash, the girl-freak. We don't want your filth here." He stepped into Vaz's bubble of personal space, and Vaz could see the energy in him tremble, barely contained.

"That girl-freak is my fiance, Hanabi Asha." Vaz let his own expression turn slightly contemptous. "Do you know the sort of prejudice the Aggregati community suffers on this campus? I'm sure you do, since you're probably responsible for part of it. People like you spread ignorance and hate and force people like Asha into the very situations you hate them for."

"Fuck you, pig fucker!" The tall boy shoved him, and Vaz let himself be shoved. "You can't marry one of those freaks- they're animals. Deviants like you shouldn't be allowed to walk around. You shouldn't be allowed to breathe our air."

"The right of marriage is one of the things we are fighting for, to help ease the stigma of such relationships. The Aggregati are people, no different from you. They never asked to be commissioned, just as you never asked to be born. And, once created, they cannot be uncreated without the same sort of trauma needed to murder a human." Vaz let himself be pushed again, hating himself for bowing into the phsyical intimidation and feeling more than a little silly to be preaching. Asha was better at this than him.

"Ah, my students! How pleasant- I hope you're all pleased with your test scores."

The gang immediately backed away from Vaz and nodded their respect to the professor. Vaz turned and gave the man a full bow. "Professor Savasena. It is an honor."

The wrinkled old man smiled and bowed lower. "Really, your grace, that's not necessary. I was hoping to catch you here before sunset; I wanted to congratulate you on yet another perfect test." The smile in his eyes was a little too sharp as he turned to his other students. "And it's so good to see you getting to know your classmates."

Vaz could have kissed the little man for his understanding. "Indeed. We were just introducing ourselves." He bowed to the little group of ingrates, touching the seal on his forehead. "Aburame Vazani."

The twelve-point mark blossomed outward from his forehead, trailing down his temples and across his face in delicate lotus flower patterns. The seal itself burned a little as it materialized. Vaz resolutely did not smirk when they all realized what, exactly, his seal signified. It was difficult to misinterpret a crown with wings on someone's forehead, after all.

"Your grace." They all bowed as low as possible without kow-towing. Vaz could smell their fear. It was delicious.

"Please, that is unnecessary." He managed a smile that didn't use teeth when they looked up. "You see, you were somewhat innacurate in calling me a lover of Aggregati; such a delineation is redundant when one is already an Aggregate."

"His grace honors our class with his presence and his excellent grades for the duration of his stay on the east coast." Savasena sounded friendly enough, but the reprimand was clear. "Of course, it's natural for one so highly ranked as the Lord of the Eastern Skies' personal assistant to want to keep a low profile, so I'm sure I needn't tell any of you students to be careful of what you say."

"Of course not, professor." The tall one was pale but not cowed.

Savasena smiled again. "Indeed. Have a good evening, children, Your Grace."

Vaz bowed to his professor and smiled at the students with too many teeth when he was gone. "I am not normally the sort to proselytize and picket- I'm not an activist by nature, and politics disinterest me. But you must understand that even being who I am, I cannot marry my fiance. Aggregati are not even allowed to marry each other. So it's a bit of a sore point when someone insults my people and the woman I love in the same breath." He retracted his seal slowly, with more control than most humans would ever manage over their one-point seals. "Some day more than just the Lords will be able to fight back when idiots like you choose to voice your prejudices."

He didn't bow to them in farewell; none of them had showed him their seals, and he outranked them all anyway. He technically didn't have to show respect to anyone on campus; he was beholden to his master and no one else.

It was nearing sunset as he neared the on-campus apartment he shared with Asha. She would be glad to see him; she always was. With any luck, she'd have dinner ready; activating his seal had drained him more than it should have. He still hadn't quite recovered from dealing with Vayesh.

"Hey! Wait a minute! Your Grace!" The voice caught up to him just as he was keying the door. Vaz didn't turn around to tear out the throat of the speaker, though at this point he wanted nothing more than the slick, hot feel of blood between his fingers.

"Can I help you?" It was one of the girls from before, the one who hadn't spoken.

"Your Grace..." She was panting from running. "Your Grace, I just wanted to apologize. Sasha and Lena were out of line from the beginning."

"If you thought so, why were you with them?" He kept his voice mild, though his fingers itched.

"I-" she blushed and shrugged. She wasn't pretty, but she wasn't ugly; she was a little on the plump side and moved with the awkwardness of one who thought she was ugly. "They're my friends."

"You are a flunky and they care nothing for you. Your apology is accepted." Vaz turned back to the door, rekeying it.

"Your Grace, I also wanted to say...I'm sorry about Asha." Her words came out in a rush. "I mean, I thought she was a bitch at first, because she was an Ag and all the boys wanted to fuck her, and then when I saw her hanging around with you, everyone else said she had to be a slut, too, because nobody knew you were...you know...and all the girls wanted to fuck you because they all just thought you were really hot and I guess I kind of suspected because you were too perfect to be real and the professor always treated you better than everyone else, but that doesn't excuse any of this really, does it?"

Vaz rested his forehead against the doorframe and viciously keyed the door. "What's your name?"

"Ashkenazi Talia, Your Grace."

"Major?"

"Aggregate engineering, Your Grace."

"Ah. Please call me Aburame-san." The door opened and he stuck his foot in it to keep it that way. "I was commissioned in Japan, and I still find myself prefering the culture and habits of my birth country, you see. Would you like to join Asha and myself for dinner, Ms Ashkenazi?"

Her eyes were wide. "I- I wouldn't dare presume-"

"Believe me, Ms. Ashkenazi, you already have. And if you intend to become a mother to my people, I would dearly like to relieve you of some of your misconceptions. Please, come in. Asha doesn't get out much aside from classes, and it worries me that she doesn't know more people."

She nodded, eyes still wide, and followed him up to his apartment. Vaz could smell dinner on the stairs, and the faint undertone of steel and sex that was uniquely Asha. The door opened before he touched it; the sight of his lover all but erased Vaz's aching bloodlust, replacing it with an entirely different sort of passion. "Asha."

"Your Grace." Deep emerald eyes blinked coquettishly up at him through long, dark lashes. The boy who opened the door (not really a boy, but too smooth around the edges to quite be considered a man) was breathtakingly lovely in the exotic, ethereal way most Aggregati commissioned for use in brothels were. Unlike Vaz, who had a twelve-point seal and could do more things with his body than most people could dream of, Asha had only a three-point seal and was something of a one-trick pony. She could change her sex and coloration at will, and had remarkable regenerative powers. She could not change her face or body beyond color or reproductive organs.

Aggregati like Asha were the reason activists picketed; they were toys, parodies of real people. Vaz had spent too long enjoying the luxury of his own lifestyle to give a damn, honestly. But he made an effort to care for her sake, because she cared. Her empathy was proof that they weren't just dolls, her personality the very counter to all the things prejudiced idiots threw in their faces. Only the most twisted Aggregate programmer would have given empathy and compassion to a brothel model, and programmers were tested for that sort of thing before they were given the job. Yet, she'd become a person anyway, and he loved her for it.

Asha straightened out of her sultry slouch in the doorway when she saw Talia. "Company! Vaz, you should have let me know, the place is a mess!" She immediately shifted into her "student" form with a swirl of colors- female, with blue eyes and dark blond hair. "Come in, please, both of you, sit down. I'll make some tea."

Vaz's apartment was small but built so as to seem larger, with high ceilings and large windows. "Asha, this is Ashkenazi Talia, from our Asian Studies class. She wants to be an Aggregate engineer."

The smile that lit up Asha's face as she bustled around their home almost made the humans' stupidity worthwhile. "That's lovely! I never got a chance to meet my little mother. Vaz knew his, but he was in processing much longer than I- Aggregati commissioned by the Azhdekhai are always better constructed." She stopped cheerfully rearranging the furniture when she got a good look at the girl he'd invited into their home. "Oh. You. I've seen you, with Lena and that boy..."

Talia nodded. "I'm sorry. I know it doesn't mean much, but they shouldn't...well, some people can't help being what they are, but they're still asses sometimes. Most of the time. I'm sorry." She was staring at her shoes as though they held the secret to life in their laces.

If anything, Asha's smile increased in radiance, and Vaz had to remind himself that tearing her clothes off in front of human company was even less socially acceptable than tearing said company's throat out. This had been his idea, after all.

"It means more than you'll ever know, I think." Asha pressed her hands to Talia's forehead, keenly unaware of the concept of personal space. "Little human, if you are willing to apologize, it places you a thousand miles ahead of half your race."

The look on the girl's face was a mix of breathless, stunned, and enraptured. Vaz smiled. Asha tended to have that effect on people when she was happy.
----------

Um. So. Don't ask me what the fuck this is, because I don't know. I like Vaz, he's an asshole. Asha...eh. I think I like her better as a boy, but she's still female regardless of her outward sex. Vaz just likes her, doesn't really care what she looks like.

Futuristic society, with apocalyptic aliens. The Azhdekhai are almost like figures out of myth; they're godlike in their intelligence. Interacting directly with them is impossible for a human intellect; since the Azhdekhai are actually peaceful creatures, they created the Aggregati to interface with lesser races. Humans, being the resourceful buggers they are, adapted Aggregati technology to their own, and began creating their own Aggregate creations. (I'll eventually figure out the proper grammar for Aggregati and Aggregate; I'm having issues with the adjectival form.)

Humans now create the Aggregati for a multitude of tasks, while the Azhdekhai sort of chill in their crazy pleasure palaces, leading lives of benign omniscience. They don't interfere with humanity much aside from keeping the peace- and they do this remarkably well, since you don't argue with something that is not only smarter than god, but larger, too. There are about a dozen of them, and they're rather badass.

Ugh, more when I'm not so tired. I'm not sure where it came from, but this idea pleases me.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Naturally, as soon as Gaara makes an appearance in my head, Vlad and Farfarello adopt him and put him to bed with a teddy bear.

*palmsmack*

Lists (Bloodlines):
Cain, Nightfire, Vlad, Silvrena, Shakrena, Nixrena, Auren, Farfarello.

A little bit about Vlad- this isn't the Vlad that I roleplayed with, this is a much earlier character who doesn't actually exist in any continuity, not really. He's related to a bunch of other characters, but he mostly just hangs out in my head and doesn't say much. Quiet type. Likes animals.

He's part of a rather prestigious dragon bloodline- old, old fanfic idea, involving characters from everywhere, but primarily FF games- he's one of the Children of Bahamut. In actuality, he's the great, great grandson of Bahamut, and he's only 3/8ths dragon; his mother was 3/4ths and his father was a half-elf. Since he is descended directly from Bahamut and a number of very old, powerful dragons, he gets all of the perks associated with the bloodline (unlike some of his cousins, like Shakrena and Nixrena, who are 1/8th and 1/16th dragon, respectively). This means he actually has a dragon form and a half dragon form, though his half dragon form looks more humanoid than, say, his mother's, and his dragon form is actually amazingly runty. (That's his father's fault; Kris was short.)

He and Shakrena are cousins, though their parents are only half siblings. They're also both reds (and redheads; I seem to have a lot of those running around), though Vlad is kind of a wuss in battle, while Shakrena is about as bloodthirsty as they come. Despite her lack of bloodline, (her grandmother was a full human, while his was a full dragon), Shakra gained the right to the title of a Child of Bahamut through rite of combat rather easily. Vlad got himself nearly killed trying, and had a champion step in for him.

His main strength comes from his father's side; he's got a very deep connection to the forests of Toroia, where his father's family comes from. He may be a red dragon, but his elements are earth and air in every way that counts; there's almost no fire in him. He's a Speaker, which means he can speak to and understand anything, particularly wild animals and recalcitrant trees.

So, a sneeze will knock him over, but if he starts talking, you're doomed. He's a very persuasive sort of guy, you see. Persuasive enough to persuade rampaging demons to take a nap, even.

As for Farfarello...he decided he wanted to be a dragon as soon as he was introduced to the others, and no one was going to argue with him- so he's a rogue, and no one knows where his bloodline is coming from. He's also second generation, which puts him on equal footing with Cain- or it would, if he weren't nucking futs, and if Cain weren't so much older than him. Farf's a baby compared to Cain- he's also a white, while Cain is blue, and the cold just conducts electricity better. *grin*

Naturally Vlad and Farfarello would start shacking up, since Farfarello's (and all of Weiss') introduction to the other people in my head involved lots of explosions and lots of people going fucking batshit. Vlad is very good at calming down psychopaths; he plays calm-down-the-behemoth on a daily basis, and has actually managed to get Cain and Auren to stop fighting once or twice. (Cain gets along fabulously with his daughters (Silvrena and Nightfire), but his only son...ouch. They've got some issues, those two.)

So, yeah. Vlad decided to convince Shukaku to take a nap, and now Gaara is sleeping. A lot. And Farfarello is all "Hey, we have the same haircut, and he's a murdering psychopath too! Cute! Lets keep him!" And everyone else is like, "Dude, haven't we got enough demons and monsters around here?" And I'm all, "If it'll make me stop writing fanfiction, I don't care what the fuck you do."

If Gaara or any of the Naruto characters decide they want to be dragons too, I'm gonna have to lay the smackdown on somebody. It would be beyond ironic if it turned out to be Lee. ...though actually, given the current state of things, it would be not only more than a little appropriate, it'd also work in ways that I don't really want to contemplate. Damnit!

Lee would be a green, obviously, and he'd probably be second generation like Cain, since the only other green was Cain's father...It would explain why he can't do genjutsu or ninjutsu, since none of the early generation children can use magic of any sort unless it's inherent dragon stuff, and even then, they're bad at it. It all makes sense!

...And now I'm going to stab myself in the eye with a fork. *sigh*

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Samurai Champloo: We are Witnessing the Evolution of the Stomach

So what is it about that new series by Shinichiro Watanabe that makes my inner fangirl go off the hook? Is it the delightfully quirky character designs and animation? The fact that the whole premise is something along the lines of "Edo meets Hip-Hop?" The guarantee of at least one random and inappropriate homoerotic moment per episode?

Well, yes, it is all of those things. It's also the characters, of course, but I can assure you it isn't the plot, since there really isn't much of one.

The premise, like I said, is Edo meets Hip-Hop. All style and no substance, baby. You thought Cowboy Bebop was bad, but Bebop has nothing on this. The show is very episodic in nature, though there is an actual plot that loosely binds each episode together. The three main characters are searching for a samurai who smells like sunflowers; thusfar the episodes have had them wandering across Japan, fighting things and trying not to starve. Most episodes don't even mention the sunflower samurai, aside from some brief whining about how they aren't looking hard enough; it'll be interesting to see how the series wraps up in the last nine episodes once they release them.

It's a lot like Bebop- some episodes were lifted straight out of Bebop, in fact (Waltz for Venus, Jupiter Jazz). I'm hoping it'll have a happier ending than Bebop; even the more serious episodes aren't quite as dark as Bebop's plot-related episodes were, so I'm hoping everyone won't die.

There are three main characters; Mugen, Jin, and Fuu. Mugen is a break-dancing, foul-mouthed lowlife from Okinawa; Jin is a badass samurai with glasses who never smiles but cares more than he should; Fuu is not as cute as she thinks she is, has a stomach connected to the universe, and gets kidnapped more than she ought to. Fuu is also the only one who is actually looking for the sunflower samurai; Mugen and Jin are her bodyguards, paying her back for saving their lives in the first episode.

I absolutely adore all three of them, even Fuu. She's pretty annoying and more than a little dense at times, but she can also be quite clever. She did save Jin and Mugen in the first episode- but she then proceeded to get kidnapped in every episode until they got to Edo. *sweatdrop* After episode seven, however, she stops getting snatched all the time, and she stops having as much to say, as the episodes become much more Jin and Mugen-centric. I think the reason I actually like Fuu is because she isn't anywhere near as much of a main character as the boys are; Watanabe didn't make the mistake of turning this into Fushiigi Yuugi, and kept her as a plot device. (She does have her good points- the dice throwing, for instance, and the eating. Oh, the eating.)

I also like Fuu because she does her best to take care of herself; when she gets kidnapped, she knows that Jin and Mugen aren't automatically going to come to her rescue, so she doesn't just scream for help. Whenever she gets stuck in a bind, she does her best to get out of things on her own- but she is just a fifteen year old girl, so, endless stomach or not, she can't really be expected to do much. She's a surprisingly strong character, for all that she's just a stereotypical "cute little girl." Her cheerfulness provides a nice contrast to Jin's inability to smile and Mugen's tendency to sulk. Fuu is also protected by Momo-san, a flying squirrel. Where did it come from? No one knows. Why is it there? No one knows. But it's saved Fuu's ass on several occasions, so we all like Momo-san.

Mugen could very well be my favorite character, but it's so hard to tell when I love Jin so much, too. He's another one of those sterotypical "And now I'm going to fight because I like to fight and I'm really good at fighting and I'm going to get better at fighting because I like to fight and now I'm going to fight" kind of characters. Aside from the fact that he's from Okinawa and fights with a Chinese sword and uses break dance moves (he also has iron shod sandals, which are awesome), you know absolutely nothing about him. He's the least attached to their little group, although he does remain loyal anyway, out of some sense of obligation to Fuu and because he still feels the need to defeat Jin.

I like Mugen because he doesn't try to hide anything; he's an arrogant, loud mouthed bastard who likes wenching and fighting, and that's it. He's awesome.

Jin is the quiet one with the dark past; you eventually learn that he killed his master, since all the other students at his dojo are now out looking for him. The thing that irritates me the most about Jin is that he never smiles. ...Okay, so he smiled twice- he smiled at Shino, and he smiled at Yukimaru, but that's it.

Jin is everyone's bitch. He's one of the most skilled samurai around, but when he has to sneak into a brothel in episode 3, he's the one who ends up dressing like a whore, (A very tall whore, but still. Oh, Jin.) and in episode 10, when Mugen and Fuu go off to look for the samurai killer, he's the one stuck behind at the temple, cleaning and repairing things. Whenever they need to pawn something to buy food, its either his swords or his glasses, and whe he protests, Fuu and Mugen ignore him. Most of the random and inappropriate homeoerotic moments are centered around him, too- people keep hitting on him, or appearing to hit on him.

I like Jin, not only because he's everyone's bitch, but because he really does care about Fuu and Mugen; in episode 10, he tells Mugen, "Don't forget, I'm the only one who gets to kill you," and in episode 17 he holds on to Fuu's shoe so he can put it with her body. He's the most mature of the three of them, but underneath the serious, stony exterior he's also very young. Episode 11 is one of my favorites because it really tells you all you need to know about Jin; he cares too much, and he's enough of an idealist to think he can save the people he cares about. He just needs to fucking smile more, and then I'll absolutely love him.

So, yes. All three of them are wonderful in their own way, and the dynamics between the three of them are just delicious. But even if I didn't love the characters, I'd still love the show- because where else are you going to see someone beatboxing into a katana?

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Song Post: Metric- Raw Sugar

Sort of wonder why
No one said a word
Don't you like it on the sly?
Don't you like it till it hurts?
Have I been on your mind?
What's a voice without a song?
Something in your head
You've been fighting all the long...

I don't want to say it
The news is not so good
We'll never get away
And even if we could
We'd just play the tambourine
Around an open flame
Oversleep and burn
To be back in the game

'Cause summer never comes
Nowhere near high noon
And winter never comes
Nor the harvest moon

Raw sugar
I don't want to die living in a high rise GRAVE
I'LL PRAY to call home
Save that date
High rise GRAVE

No I'm not complaining
Yes it could be worse
Ferment on the wish bone
Match the lips to the purse
Neighborhood's a runway
Fry the ass and thighs
Dirty diamond dealers
Pushed behind the eyes

Cause summer never comes
Nowhere near high noon
And winter never comes
Nor the harvest moon

Raw sugar
I don't want to die living in a high rise GRAVE
I'LL PRAY to call home
Save that date
High rise GRAVE

Still I wear the red dress
Paint my toes and twirl
Take it back to old times
Back when I was still a girl
'Cause now I'm all baboon boys
Coochie Coochie Coo
Sortof wonder why
I missed a kiss for you

'Cause summer never comes (save that date)
Winter never comes (high rise rate)
-Metric, "Raw Sugar"
---
This was part of the Samurai Champloo FST I downloaded recently; it's on FST if you're interested. I think it's awesome since it does a wonderful job of capturing the characters. This song is from Jin's soundtrack, and it fits him and Shino rather well. I'll write about why I love SC fairly soon, I suppose, because I really do love it. I also love this song, hence the post.

RAGE

Poet, be not daunted by the poems you cannot write:
A poet must work to find words that flow.
Rage, rage against the rhyming that is trite.

Your knuckles around your pen may be white,
And it may seem your skill has reached its plateau--
Poet, be not daunted by the poems you cannot write.

You may reach a point when meter does not excite,
And you must, to prove that you are still a pro,
Rage, rage against the rhyming that is trite.

You may be suffering from total creative blight,
But let this not stop your writing! And so,
Poet, be not daunted by the poems you cannot write.

Some poems are long and tell of the plight
Of ancient gods and heroes from long ago,
And they rage, rage against the rhyming that is trite.

Like those heroes, you must strive and fight
To produce a poem that makes readers cry, "Whoa!"
Poet, be not daunted by the poems you cannot write.
Rage, rage against the rhyming that is trite.

The BURNING

Do not give in to poems that won't write:
A poet must find words that flow.
Rage, rage against the rhyming that is trite.

Your knuckles around your pen may be white,
And it may seem your skill has reached its plateau--
But do not give in to poems that won't write.

You may reach a point when meter does not excite,
And you must, to prove that you are still a pro,
Rage, rage against the rhyming that is trite.

You may be suffering from total creative blight,
But let this not daunt you, oh writer! And so,
Do not give in to the poem that won't write.

Some poems are long and tell of the plight
Of ancient gods and heroes from long ago,
And they rage, rage against the rhyming that is trite.

Like those heroes, you must strive and fight
To produce a poem that makes readers go, "Whoa!"
Do not give in to poems that won't write.
Rage, rage against the rhyming that is trite.

--
Villanelles are amazingly annoying- you need to have something profound to say in them, otherwise they're just ridiculous.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Childhood with my Father

In summer we spent our days by the canal
-\--\--\--With buckets full of fish
-\-\-just big enough to throw back in
-\-\-\-While dreaming of sweet lemonade in the shade

In autumn we rode our bikes up past the school
-\--\--\--And talked about the world
-\-\-While laughing loudly at ourselves,
-\-\-\-To make up for missing my birthday each year.
-\--\--\--
In spring we played softball, flew kites in the park
-\--\--\--And tended roses while
-\-\-Impatients managed to escape
-\-\-\-The boundaries set by


In winter we walked through Colonial Park
- \| - - \ | - - \|-- \
where dying roses pressed
- \| - \| - \
their thorny fingers to the sky
- \| - \ | - \| - And cross country ski tracks made scars in the snow
- \ | - - \ | - - \ | - -
And bike rides with Dad down impossible hills
- \ | - - \ | - - \| - - Discussing Galileo's learned attempt
- \ - - - \- \ - - \
To take the dimensions of the damned.
- \ - - \ - \ - (Pedalling furiously, it was all a matter

Of mass ratios; dad always reached the bottom first.)

Winter reminds me of days with my dad:
\--\--\--Spent outdoors in the cold.
\-\--My father and I liked to walk through the park
- \ | - - \ | - - \ | - - In summer, spring, and fall
- \ - \ - But memories call to

Monday, November 22, 2004

The sea is calling me home, home to you.
The pounding sea is calling me home, home to you.

On a dark new year's night
on the west coast of Clare
I heard your voice singing.
Your eyes danced the song,
your hands played the tune.
T'was a vision before me.

We left the music behind and the dance carried on
as we stole away to the seashore
and smelt the brine, felt the wind in our hair
and with sadness you paused.

Suddenly, I knew that you'd have to go.
Your world was not mine, your eyes told me so.
Yet it was there I felt the crossroads of time
and I wondered why.

As we cast our gaze on the tumbling sea,
a vision came o'er me,
of thundering hooves and beating wings
in the clouds above.

As you turned to go, I heard you call my name.
You were like a bird in a cage, spreading its
wings to fly.
'The old ways are lost', you sang as you flew
and I wondered why.

The thundering waves are calling me home, home to you.
The pounding sea is calling me home, home to you.

The pounding waves are calling me home, home to you.
The pounding sea is calling me home, home to you.

The pounding waves are calling me home, home to you.
The pounding sea is calling me home, home to you.
-Loreena McKennit, "The Old Ways"

Theme song for Seventh Hour, and just an all around pretty song. It pleases me, because it suggests so much while saying so little. This may or may not be the first in a series of music posts; I've been neglecting the blog again, snippets of random fanfic notwithstanding.

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

and now to introduce our heroine
a girl so lovely, tried and true


They say it happened on a quiet night
in April, after a thunderstorm came through,
Past the train tracks where the children played,
In the grave yard where the hippies lay.
The ground was soft and wet; the moon was full
And bright upon those groovy graves, where hands
Were sprouting from the mud to claw their way
to freedom. Daisy-like, they popped up and
They shambled slowly towards the sleeping town.
Complacency has such a ..... price.

The zombies came upon the sleeping town
And struck with groaning

A friend and I were walking when we saw
Him Fall; he started as a speck of dust
On the horizon but he grew into
A screaming meteor and tore the earth
To shreds. She ran back home to find the priest,
the mayor, and the coroner- no man
alive or dead could have survived a fall
Like that. I stayed to watch and wonder at
The cruelty of Heaven, to eject a man
So forcefully. What little I could see
Of him was beautiful. My friend returned
with all The town in tow; they cried out "God
Protect us!" when they saw the crater in
The broken ground. "Stay back!" a voice commanded
from beneath the rubble and debris.
The others fled and I alone stood firm
As inky wings unfurled to blot the sun.
He lived, despite his fall, and he was great
and terrible but I was unafraid-
For I had heard the music of the spheres
within my dreams: the sweet and perfect tones
Of angels who have yet to fear the Fall.


Robert Browning Andrea Del Sart Called The Faultless Painter p934
Wordsworth, THe Ruined Cottage p703




Two girls diverged in a yellow room


Really, Really Unfinished Ballad of the Zombies, Written Almost for Halloween, But Really a Few Weeks Late, But Who's Counting, Anyway, Since Zombies Are Cool?

They say it happened on a quiet night
in April, after a thunderstorm came through,
Past the train tracks where the children played,
In the grave yard where the hippies lay.
The ground was soft and wet; the moon was full
And bright upon those groovy graves, where hands
Were sprouting from the mud to claw their way
to freedom. Daisy-like, they popped up and
They shambled slowly towards the sleeping town.
The full moon through her window woke our sleep
-ing heroine; immediately she knew
That something was not right-

[insert end of poem here]

fucking meters

Pentameter is a fucking shitty meter. Five stresses is at the very edge of what we can grasp in our heads at one time, and tetrameter just sounds so much more rhythmic and so much less of the suck.

Blech.

Monday, November 15, 2004

TRIUMPH

HA! YES! I WIN!

Finally, after months and months of error messages, Blogger has republished my entire blog! YES! Oh, God, YES!

Sex isn't as good as this, ooh, baby.

*does the happy dance*

Ache

All we do is ache for the chance
Of one last embrace in the falling starlight
One last eternity in the neverending
circle of your arms
One last chance to trace
with lips and tongue the scars
where tears once fell
and to look through the stained
glass windows of your soul out onto
the lush mystery they conceal
if our desire is not enough
to rekindle the spark of life
in your frail and broken body
then take our own lives as your own
take our dreams to color your cheeks
take our breath to bring dew to your mouth
take our hearts to give rythym to your dancing
take our souls to give life to your song
all we ask is one last embrace
and one more starry kiss
and to once again feel the warmth
of your skin.
----

I wrote this a long, long time ago...it sort sounds like Theron, but it's a little too sentimental. I'm losing my grip on his character, which is annoying; he can't be completely evil if Brenon loves him as much as he does.

The thing about Brenon is that he doesn't feel anything sexual for Theron- and Theron assumes otherwise because of his mother. (Oh, his mother.) What Brenon feels for Theron is just an intense desire to be as close to him as possible- it's the desire to slip inside someone else's skin and stay there, wrapped around them. It's a desire to be someone else, to an extent, but it's also a need to protect and nurture. Brenon would sooner chew his own arm off than let anything happen to Theron, which is why he snaps a little when Theron leaves...

Why is he so obsessed with the bastard? Damned if I know- it was something like love at first sight. Only it's not love in the conventional sense- it's one of those ideal sort of loves that the Greeks pratted on about.

It's a little creepy, yes. (Not that I know anything about what that actually feels like... *coughingfit*)

Those three iambic lines in the center- "last chance to trace.... the scars...where tears once fell" spent a very long time walking around in my head, waiting very impatiently to be written down. They still show up from time to time; it's one of my favorite quasi-erotic images. I can't remember if I'd posted this before, you see, so if I have, then I'm just posting it again.

It pleases me, despite the fact that it's old and has no particular meter. (Verse writing has spoiled me for writing random stream of consciousness things.)

Friday, November 12, 2004

FFVII Redux

"Space aliens! Why the god damn fucking hell did it have to be space aliens! Fuckers!" Cid glared at Nanaki as though it were the big cat's fault.

Cosmo Canyon's guardian shrugged, the human motion looking odd on his inhuman frame. "We won't know what their intentions are until they come closer to the planet, but we can still see them from here. Take a look through the telescope yourself, and tell me what you think."

Cid's palms were itching for the haft of the Venus Gospel, so he settled for lighting another cigarette, despite Nanaki's impatient and disapproving stare. "Whatcha want me to do?"

"Just look through the view piece."

He could hear Nanaki fiddling with the controls as he leaned over the periscope-looking thing attached to the telescope. The starry sky spread out before his eyes in larger-than-life detail.

"Please wait a moment while I set the proper coordinates."

Cid repressed a snort; the damn cat was always so fuckin' polite. He waited while the image in the view piece swam in and out of focus before settling on one spot in the sky.

Cid's jaw dropped, along with his cigarette. "Holy fuckin' shit!" And he'd thought the Shinra no.26 was beautiful when they'd first launched her- half a dozen elegant, silvery, birdlike shapes hung in the sky like Yuletide ornaments. They glowed faintly against the backdrop of space, reflecting all the colors of the stars around them in a soft, multihued corona.

They were the sexiest fucking thigs he'd ever seen.

Nanaki's voice was slightly drier than usual. "I figured you would appreciate the telescope."

Cid hadn't even heard him. "D'you think they'd let me borrow one of 'em for a while?"
Music: *plays*
Barbara: *stares*
Me: Okay, fine, we won't listen to the Vienna Boys Choir singing "Carol of the Bells."
Winamp: *Random song!*
Me: ...we'll listen to the Transiberian Orchestra do "Carol of the Bells" instead.
Barbara: ...*facepalm*
Me: D'accord.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

November

November smells like blood.

The cold numbs the senses, but the stench is there, underlying the smell of snow and leaves. Blood colors everything even as the world grows sterile in the chill.

November smells like blood.

It leaks out of every pore and orifice, and then it hangs in the air until December, when it gets buried beneath a layer of frost. Until then, it's everywhere, from the tip of your tongue to the tip of your fingers.

It sits heavy in the pit of your stomach, churning into sickness and bile.

November smells like blood- November, the ninth month displaced to the penultimate syllable in a long, long year. All Saint's month, heralded by Halloween- blood sacrifices stick around longer than we'd like.

I fucking hate November. I can't stand the smell of blood.

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

six years too late, and now we're lost in the silence.

Fuck, I don't think I can breathe. This isn't fair, not fair at all but life isn't fucking fair and I hate this so much it hurts and it's hard to breathe.

November is worse than February, so much worse.

Christ. It still hurts to breathe.

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Music

We watch as green-filmed lamps illuminate
Each dark musician's stand and well-marked page
Below the dimming lights upon the stage.
There's silence as we hold our breaths and wait.

A deadly tuning chord strikes true and straight
While instruments prepare to wail and rage:
A grand orchestral army sent to wage
A war against the apathy of fate.

Some others might have wavered, been unsure
In sounding Allegretto-angry, and
Some symphonies might shy and be demure.
But this is something shocking, wild and pure;
So even though we hear the music end
This transcendental energy endures.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Enough about Theron. He depresses me. The first arc of the story is his childhood, his rise to power, and his betrayal of Brenon and Mihonil. The second arc takes place between a hundred and a hundred fifty years later, after he's taken over.

Theron takes over by creating an army of the Dead and slaughtering everything in his path. He then turns all of those corpses into the Dead; using a combination of Omnismithing and arcane magic, he creates zombies with lifespans. He leaves a few people alive, but for the most part, they're all zombies. Then he rearranges the scenery, and sinks the capital city below the ground. (Yes, this is actually just Vagrant Story without the ass pants.) Theron, as the new Voyance, sets up court in the Undercity and does a few things to obliterate all magic use within the borders of his country.

The city spread out; the Dead don't need to worry about exhausting natural resources, and the living are considered second class citizens.

Warning: not especially pleasant

"Isn't this what you wanted?"

His voice echoed in the back of his skull as he kissed Brenon, his fingers digging furrows in the cold skin. Hard and vicious and deep, as he delved for the last vestiges of warmth in his friend's body with his tongue, with his hands. It was so cold, and he was so still.
--------------------

It was a dark world.

The sky was never so much gray as it was colorless, devoid of hue even when the sun was shining. And when the sun was shining, it never even managed a proper shine- it hung in the colorless sky like a coin on a string, left in the rain. It's light was tarnished, desolate.

It was a cold world.

The cities were as colorless as the sky, trapped in a perpetual state of late autumn, filled with bare trees and damp, biting winds. Spring was a legend, and summer nothing more than a myth. All there was was autumn, and the promise of winter on the horizon, forever.

It was a dead world.

Corpses filled the streets, and the living hid beneath the gutters, waiting for the reapers. Each day grew colder, darker, and more and more of them left their dilapidated dwellings to join the dead in the streets.

Stella smoothed out her skirt and crossed her legs at the ankles, waiting patiently for the bus. Dead leaves swirled, dancing like marionettes around her feet in the cold, cold wind.
--------------

There's something oddly touching about the way Theron violates his best friend's corpse...*cough* I'm so going to end up tearing my eyes out if I ever manage to get to that scene. Theron is just so full of anger by that point- he's angry at the world in general, but angry at Brenon in particular for giving up. He sees it as a betrayal; this doesn't excuse what he does (and never mind the details, really), particularly since he does it again to Mihonil later, when he's thinking perfectly clearly.

I think I'm just going to blame Theron's character on the Book of Vile Darkness and have done with it.

The other bit is Stella's world, if it were as dramatic and pretentious as I feel like making it. She's blind and wears skirts with ponchos and bitch boots, and Solneki is afraid of her. Since Solneki isn't afraid of anything, this is rather impressive on her part.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Birthdays

It's late; I wake to darkness and the moon,
My rest once more distressed by frightful things.
My body aches from rising far too soon,
And trembles with the fears that autumn brings.
I think October caught me unawares
With turning leaves that suddenly enthrall,
And sighing breezes singing soft like prayers,
Their music dying in the dawning fall.
I hear the changes coming, like the plague,
Brought in with mobile motes of rushing time
To shatter fragile hopes and make dreams vague,
With both the terrifying and sublime.
It's late and I must wait for night to end,
As sleep is ever my inconstant friend.
It's late; I wake to hunger and the moon,
My rest once more distressed by frightful things.
My body aches from rising far too soon,
And trembles with the fears that Autumn brings.
I think October caught me unawares
With turning leaves that suddenly enthral,
And sighing breezes singing soft like prayers,
Their music dying in the dawning Fall.
I hear the changes coming, like the plague,
Brought in with mobile motes of rushing time
To shatter fragile hopes and make dreams vague,
With both the terrifying and sublime.
It's late; I wake with moonlight in my eyes

Monday, October 18, 2004

Theron

It's kind of funny how much I actually like Theron, despite the fact that he makes me sick sometimes.

Let's face it, the kid is screwed up. He survived by cannibalizing his mother's corpse- only to be raised by said corpse. Even if they'd stayed in one place long enough for him to make friends, most other children avoided him instinctively or threw rocks at him.

He actually seems to exhibit symptoms of autism or schizophrenia; until he meets Brenon, he honestly does not give a flying fuck about the rest of humanity. He's a very disturbing and disturbed child- his lack of emotion may be the result of the rather traumatic circumstances of his birth, but there's probably also a genetic predilection for various brain abnormalities.

'Course, I'm not at all qualified to judge if my characters are autistic or not, but it seems as though Theron could be, slightly. Asberger's syndrome, perhaps, only he doesn't exhibit any of the obsessive compulsive symptoms or any of the impaired motor functions. His fixation with magic could possibly fit into that category, but it's not quite the same...It would make a great deal of sense for him to have some sort of developmental disorder, though. And mild autism would explain a few things.

He's incredibly intelligent and amazingly talented with magic of all kinds- he can whistle, weave, and smith, but smithing is his primary strength. It takes him a while to develop into an Omnismith; having the talent is one thing, but no amount of talent is going to help without the proper training. He's a magical prodigy, though.

He becomes Bren's friend because Bren is persistent and can't take a hint; Theron actually doesn't feel particularly attached to Bren, despite the fact that the older boy saves his ass on a regular basis. He feels no empathy towards other living things, which is why Bren has to actually tell him that kidnapping Whimsey's pet rabbits and cutting them open is a very bad thing.

As he gets older, Theron learns to interact normally with other people. He still just uses them to further his own goals, but he can pretend to care about normal, human things. If he feels anything at all for Brenon, he hides it well...and never mind about what exactly happens to Brenon, because I still haven't forgiven him for that. Well, not nevermind, because I'll have to write it eventually, I suppose.

Theron wanders around for several years and picks up a few classical arcanum techniques, after finding he has a real affinity for pain magic. He's kind of like Silverlock D'Alestri, only not at all concerned with the consent of his power foci. (Silver gets his power from pain and sex, but he never uses someone as a foci without their permission unless he's being paid to do so. Gotta love mercenary morals.)

The Voyance Blacklists Theron for using arcane magic in the city, but doesn't realize it's his own son he just condemned to Death (really need new words for this). Theron leaves for a while and comes back an Omnismith who acts like a Vimancer- which is slang for necromancer, sort of. Vimancers work with both life and death, hence the turning a cabbage into a bird and creating life out of that which was dead. Proper Vimancers are just myths- no amount of aether manipulation can create or heal a soul. The Voyance is an inverse Vimancer, also called an Unraveler, because he can animate corpses and destroy or wound souls.

Being Blacklisted is what allows Theron to become an Unraveler like his father; his already screwed up genes get twisted even further when his soul is damaged by the Mark. (The Voyance is effectively a Blacklisted Omnismith- being Marked gradually seals away a person's magicrafting and slowly destroys their soul until they become one of the Dead. The Voyance's Mark is a little different, but the principle behind it is the same.) Because he was an Omnismith first, being Marked doesn't do anything to seal his powers, unlike the Voyance, who loses any of his original powers by being marked before succeeding to the power base. Omnismiths are funny because they're pretty much exempt from everything- they make up their own rules because they can transmute reality.

The general moral of Theron's existance is that it's a bad idea to mix magic and antimagic, and screwing with someone's genetic makeup is only going to end in grievous bodily harm and massive propery damage.

After all this trauma, Theron snaps completely- he was a cold, uncaring bastard before, but after coming into his own and having his soul ripped away (during the course of this, he realizes the Voyance is his father), he loses any control he might have had. He uses Brenon to get back at the Voyance and his mother and basically the entire country- and that's where things start to enter the incredibly squicktastic territory, because the things he does to Brenon and Mihonil are just fucking wrong. (It's worse with Brenon, though, because Mih never really trusted him. Brenon always did, and would have done anything for Theron had he simply asked.)

*shudder* Yeh. Theron is evil in the worst sort of way; he's willing to betray the trust of the people who love him (and Brenon really does love him) without feeling even the slightest bit of regret.

I wish I could make these things a bit more organized and coherent, but I won't be able to get real, concrete impressions of the characters until I actually start writing them. The good news is that Theron's rise to power is only half of the story; the second half is Stella's story. The world Theron and Bren live in is a pretty bright one, but their story is fucking depressing; Stella's world is a very, very cold one, but she gets a happy ending. So does Brenon, actually; I haven't yet decided what to do with Theron. He's fucking hard to kill, though...

Sunday, October 17, 2004

Mourning Star

A little bit of history- back during the Giant Crazy Story With Too Many Characters, there was a young woman named Radrazha; this was before any of the current countries came into being. Mages and smiths and weavers were common all over the place; mages more so than smiths or weavers, as actual arcane magic was seen as more useful than crafting. Radra was a windsmith at first, but she eventually came into her full power as an Omnismith after a series of incredibly traumatic events including but not limited to being raped, committing murder, and getting married.

She eventually went batshit and destroyed a huge chunk of the scenery. Her husband killed her and raised their son, who eventually grew up to restore the broken land and ascend the throne of this new country, Radrezaria. He named the place after his mother despite his father's protests, and eventually killed his father for getting in his way. As the son of an Omnismith and a very powerful mage of demonic descent, he was pretty damn badass in his own right- and he became the first Voyance.

The borders of Radrezaria became closed to outsiders for a while as the Voyance built up his power; he blamed mages for his mother's insanity and made Radrezaria a haven for those who practiced alternative forms of magic. When he died, he became one of the Dead- the very first one, actually. The next Voyance refused to reveal how he came into the title, and thus a whole culture of secrecy surrounds the succession- certain laws were passed by the first Voyance, however, that are strictly adhered to.

The Voyance is not allowed to bear or father children. (Female Voyances are rare, but they have existed.) The first Voyance passed along his powers when he turned himself into one of the Dead, and every crafter who was Killed after that becomes absorbed into the power base. So each successive Voyance becomes more powerful than the last as they absorb the powers of renegade crafters when they Die.

They're mutants, really; magicrafting is hereditary, and becoming the Voyance does some crazy shit to your genes so that the power is built into your genetic structure. Having more than one person with that sort of power at their disposal would have disastrous consequences on the balance of power in Radrezaria, and the first Voyance knew this from the start.

The Voyance himself can't actually use the crafting power he absorbs from the Dead; the successsion rituals but you in a permanent state of near-Death so that he can't actually craft anything. He's an Unweaver, an Unraveler of the highest degree. Despite the inherited power of enough smiths to make an Omnismith of unimaginable power, the Voyance is unable to tap into it, and can't actually touch the elements.

Theron's mother was a renowned aethersmith, and a member of the Voyance's council. She was a power hungry bitch with no compunctions about using sex to get what she wanted, and the fact that she was an aethersmith, the rarest of the rarest, only added to her appeal. The Voyance was a lecherous bastard, but he expected Shanonil to be smart enough to keep from getting pregnant. When he found out, he had her Killed (need a better word for it)- but somehow Theron survived this. Shanonil became Shanreth, and brought her baby to term. If the Voyance had figured out that she was pregnant sooner, Theron probably would have died; as it was, he managed to feed off her corpse long enough to be born prematurely, but this nearly destroyed Shanreth. (It's difficult for a zombie to regain its strength, you know.)

The Dead can't use magic and most of their memories are gone, but Shanonil had her memories woven into Theron before the Voyance Killed her and managed to recover most of them after being exiled. She took care of Theron out of spite, for the most part, and moved around a lot to keep the Voyance from finding her. Eventually she moved out to Luthra, a farming village in the asscrack of nowhere, near the border Radrezaria shares with this world's equivalent of the Lost Woods.

Theron doesn't actually find out who he is until he grows up; Shanreth leaves him in Luthra with Bren's family and disappears a little after his thirteenth birthday.

What all this means is that Theron's existance is against the law- and he's the first proper Omnismith to be born since the founding of the country. The combination of the Voyance's power sink and his mother's aethersmithing produced an Omnismith...and an inhuman, mutant freak. >:D

Theron knows his mother is a corpse; he's always known it. He lives a pretty lonely and occasionally abused life until he meets Bren, who decides to make it his job to take care of Theron. They're sort of friends, in the sense that Bren would do just about anything for Theron, and Theron doesn't hate him in return. For Theron, that's practically a declaration of undying love- but Theron's not the sort of person you want loving you. It's just not...healthy.

Next post will be a bit more in depth about Theron as a person. Whee.