All for the love of thee

WHAT I DON'T EVEN KNOW.

In conclusion, Orrin is an idiot. AN IDIOT WITH ADD.

---------------

Silverlock stretched out on the couch with a treatise on arcanic engineering while Orrin explored the apartment. He kept an ear open for explosions or the sound of breaking glass and kept a pencil on hand to make notes in the margins.

"Sweet Goddess!" Orrin's head appeared over the top of the couch. "Can I marry your kitchen?"

"No," Silverlock replied, without looking up from his book.

Orrin's head disappeared. There was a clang from the direction of the kitchen before he reappeared. "Can I marry your oven-stove-thing?"

"No."

"What about the fridge?"

"Already in a committed relationship with the dishwasher."

Orrin sighed, and disappeared again. He returned a moment later, and sat next to the hulking entertainment system taking up one of the living room walls. "Can I marry your sound system?"

"No."

He sighed again, and rubbed it's sleek black side soothingly. "No one understands our love."

He wandered away again. Silverlock stared at the page he'd been reading in consternation; the margin was filled with little doodles of tiny rabbits.

Orrin came back and draped himself over the couch. "The jacuzzi and I are eloping. Just thought you might like to know."

He shut the book. "Orrin, you are not marrying or otherwise running off with any of my household appliances. I forbid it."

"Hence the eloping. You can't suppress true love." Silverlock stared at him. Orrin rolled his eyes. "Fine, I won't elope with the hot tub. Can I marry you?"

Silverlock went very still for a microsecond, and glared at the younger man. Orrin was grinning, but his eyes were serious. "No. I hate weddings."

"You must be evil. Everyone likes weddings."

His lip curled in disgust. "I don't. My sister got married- she was the most beautiful woman in the world when we were young, you know. I'm not exaggerating- there was a vote. And then she got married, and she turned fat and wrinkled and her hair fell out."

"Was she still the most beautiful woman in the world?"

He carefully placed his hand on Orrin's head, and shoved. Orrin fell off the couch with a squawk. "That's beside the point." The truth was, marriage had only made Sarila more lovely, weight and wrinkles aside. He was still bitter; there'd been a time when she had been beautiful for him.

"Fine, then. It's a shame- Faraz would've had fun being my second." His head popped up over the edge of the couch again.

Silverlock opened his mouth, and then shut it, looking thoughtful. "Would you make her wear a suit?" He was fiercely grateful to Orrin for leaving the subject of his siblings alone.

"She'd probably insist on it."

He paused a moment to savor that image, and wondered vaguely if Faraz would ever consider modeling. "How hard would you try to kill me if I had sex with her? Theoretically, I mean."

It was Orrin's turn to glare. "There is no try. There is only painful death. She's like my sister, man. And you'd have to take on El, Ravi, and Lindra, too, and Jay would totally kick your ass. He hates it when people make his work harder, and I'd need so much more therapy after killing you."

"Pity." In a way, it was a comfort to know that some things would always remain constant, no matter how much the universe shifted. Still, Faraz was one of the most attractive people he knew, and that kind of lost opportunity was a crying shame. "Oh, stop glaring. I'm perfectly capable of respecting reasonable boundaries, despite all rumors to the contrary."

Orrin held the glare for another moment, then shrugged, deceptively casual. "It's not like I really have anything to worry about on that score," he said, examining his nails. "You're far too short for her."

"Oh, that's it!" Orrin was already running, but his socks slipped on the carpet, and Silverlock performed a flying tackle off the back of the couch that would have done any of his old teachers at the Guild proud. He might be getting old, and he might be going soft, but that didn't mean Orrin stood a chance. "You're not so tall that you can't be dragged down to my level, boy."

Orrin was laughing to hard to respond, but that might have had something to do with the way Silverlock was tickling his ribs with the merciless efficiency of an Assassin High Lord. When he decided Orrin had had enough, Silverlock sat back on his heels and looked smug.

"You're such a bastard." Orrin was gasping for breath.

"And I suppose you're a saint?" he asked archly. The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them; they sent a thread of ice down his spine.

"Of course not," Orrin said, oblivious. "I am only sleeping with you for your kitchen, after all."

"That's fine. I'm not a jealous man, and I don't mind sharing." He struck an aggrieved pose and flopped onto the floor beside Orrin. "Just don't make me stand second to my stove. My pride wouldn't stand for it."

"And you hate weddings," Orrin reminded him. "Still, this is a nice place you've got here."

"Your tax marks at work."

"Hm." Orrin dug his fingers into the carpet, leaving clawmarks in the thick pile. "What is it exactly that you do for Parliament?"

Silverlock gently removed his hand from the carpet and laced their fingers together. "You don't want to know, I promise you. But if you ask me again in a year, I'll tell you."

"A year, huh?" Orrin looke down at their hands, and his ears turned slightly pink. "Yeah, sure. A year. I can do that."

--

WHAT I DON'T EVEN KNOW. Someday I'll be able to write characters who aren't thirteen year old girls. IF THEY HAD PIGTAILS, THEY'D BE PULLING THEM. FATALITY.

Let's see, things- Orrin likes to cook, and is quite good at it, hence the interest in the kitchen. Silverlock's kitchen would make a professional chef jealous, but he hardly ever uses it. He can cook, he's just too lazy to bother most of the time.

And it's not so much that Silverlock is short- he is, but you never realize how short unless he's barefoot, and he's never barefoot except in the privacy of his own home. His shoes usually lift him up to 5'8" or therabouts, which means he and Orrin see eye to eye. But Faraz is 6'6", so anyone under six foot is too short for her.

Technically, they couldn't get married- marriage is a religious institution, and the Fifth Era is currently between religions. All the old gods are gone, and there aren't any new ones- just a giant carnivorous bird thing roosting in the top of Rianna's Tower. People try to worship it, but it usually just eats them. No one even knows if it's sentient.

Civil partnerships are available for any people, and convey all the legal aspects of marriage. There are even provisions for polygamous arrangements, since Ishkhahar was hardly the only deity of the Fourth Era to encourage polyamory. It's a purely legal arrangement, and is just as often made between business partners as it is married couples or groups. But Silverlock really does hate weddings; they leave a sour taste in the back of his throat.

Guys! I'm feeling seriously omnipotent!

Um. I'm watching the GenX movie- which was made for TV, has some of the most amazingly terrible special effects in the universe, and is full of mid-90s craziness and dream sequences. Dream sequences involving dance scenes. And the movie had me kind of bored up until then, but now? Now?

OMG I LOVE ANGELO. No matter what incarnation. I. I just. Dancing. Music. Muttering angrily in Spanish. I love him. He's such a huge screaming dork- and in the movie, he's a geek in addition to being a dork.

I also love Emma Frost and her terrible wig and Sean's silly, silly vest. I mean, what? Is that zebra print? Seriously.

The movie is kind of mouthy and a little graphic for something made for TV- between the cursing and the threats of sexual violence, I dunno. A bit more extreme than I expected. And the plot is pasted on kind of horribly, and the characters are but pale shadows of their GenX selves...but man, I'm in love. This is the worst movie ever, and I love it.

(Don't trust Sean! He's only after your lucky charms!)

I'm not gonna be one more casualty

I keep listening to the music of my freshman year of highschool- the soundtrack of that year has always been particularly vivid for me.

There was a point in time, in the spring of 2000, when I was listening to The Best of Adiemus, Sting's "Brand New Day" album, and Emmylou Harris and Linda Rondstadt's compilation "The Western Wall" on repeat, day after day. I'd put them on the stereo in the family room and play Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete for hours on end, and I'd steal the CDs themselves when I figured dad wouldn't miss them. I took them to school. I took them to Norway. (Actually, of those three, the only one that made it to Norway was Adiemus.)

The other CDs I listened to incessantly that year were Vertical Horizon's "Everything You Want" and Sarah McLachlan's "Mirrorball." To a lesser extent, I listened to Tracy Chapman's "Telling Stories"- that was another one of dad's, and he played it in the kitchen at dinner a lot.

Freshman year was before I got a CD player that didn't suck- I was using a handmedown from one of the brothers, a giant square thing that skipped if you looked at it too hard.

Listening to Tracy Chapman again makes me think of nights in the winter, when we had dinner at seven and it was pitch dark, and I'd be grimy from band practice. I'm on the opposite side of the year, seasonally, right now- but early spring feels so much like late October- just a little warmer and a little wetter. And this is my favorite time of year to lose myself in the weather and in music.

There's always a point, towards the end of winter, when it seems as though the sun has come out. The whole word is just that much brighter. I can remember that transition first year, and sophomore year- I can't remember it happening last year, though I know it had to. We just hit that point here- unsurprisingly enough, Daylight Savings marked it, because the weather has turned and the light is practically solid.

I'm listening to "Casualty" by Missy Higgins, and the twilight is drawing itself out as long as possible- but it feels like I'm sitting in my room, playing roms on my computer, six years ago or more.

(I no longer feel as though I am doomed to fall in love with a liar, or as though I was born six years too late. My voice is still too quiet, but I've come into my own, just a bit. Not as much as I need to, but I am more than who I was.)

Since this thing is off the feed, I really need to recapture the feel and mindset of spontaneous blogging. It's something I haven't done in forever, it seems- I used to use this place as a complete brain dump, but now I tend to avoid posting unless I have something significant to say.

There's nothing wrong with posting only at least halfway decent content- one should always aspire to posting no more than 10% crap. But having a rantspace is good for me, and some of my spontaneous babbling back in the day was occasionally interesting and insightful.

I wanted to cut back on bullshit this year, to speak my thoughts and be honest to people's faces. I haven't really been succeeding. Things keep getting worse, and I'm not sure how to fix them, or if they even can be fixed, or if they're worth fixing.

I assume they're worth fixing. Most things are- I just don't know how.

It's the uncertainty that kills me, every time, and I'm just afraid that this will spiral out of control. I've always been afraid of being alone, and that's where this will leave me.

I don't know what to do.

Twofish

Twofish by A Demon of His Word remains the best Good Omens fic I have ever read. It is, quite possibly, the best Aziraphale/Crowley story out there. It is even quite likely the best romantic short story in the whole of the internet.

Never fails to make me smile, even when things are going to shit around me. A good story ought be able to do that, you know.

Sound of White

Ugh. So, I have all sorts of fragments that I need to write, at some point. But I can't quite seem to manage actually writing them. So instead, I shall write about them!

For Toggle, there's a Silverlock/Blaine scene I've wanted to write since last year. It would be the Festival of Joshel, which is an enormous, week long celebration that takes over the city- it's sort of like Mardi Gras, only it lasts for a week. Even people who don't worship Joshel get to celebrate, because Joshel is such a huge deity. There are parades and dances and masks, and the Church of Joshel sponsors the whole thing- and all the slaves in the city get the week off, or at the very least, the last day off. Silverlock does that thing where he drags Blaine out of the infirmary- and Blaine's reaction is WTF, have you looked outside, they're practically rioting out there, we're gonna get trampled. Silverlock gets a couple of the Shrive to jaunt them outside the city, up the coast a few miles, where a small-ish congregation of Joshelites are having their celebration for the last day of the festival. There's a bonfire on the beach, and everyone is dancing and singing and drumming and drinking and having sex. Blaine gets a little bit wigged out by the crowd and the very palpable presence of a god that isn't his, so he wanders down the beach to stare at the waves and lets Silverlock reconnect his soul for a bit so at least one of them can have a properly good time. (He can feel a few other leechmages in the throng, none of them strong enough or close enough to be more than a faint, uncomfortable buzzing in the corners of his soul. He can feel Silverlock, too, and the temptation to reach out is almost too strong to resist. Almost. He knows better than to try and touch what he can never really have.)

Blaine ends up meditating until the tide comes in, while Silverlock dances and basks in the joy of the people around him. Eventually he wanders off to find Blaine and wake him up before he drowns- and finds a very poisonous sea snake wrapped around him. After that it's mostly just dialogue and the two of them being cute at each other.
("I'm fairly certain that's got rather deadly poison."

"Mm. Watch where you're stepping- her nest is buried in the sand by those rocks." He opened his eyes and looked up at Silverlock. "Did you have a good time?"

"Of course. And you?" His hair, unbound for once, spilled past his shoulders when he leaned forward, brushing Blaine's face.

"Making new friends." He held up his hand, where the snake's head lay. It curled around to the underside of his arm. "She's a bit shy around strangers.")

And of course Silverlock's thoughts inevitably end up thinking about Blaine naked, wearing nothing but a giant snake. I'm thinking this image ends up in the "Potentially very hot or very weird" category. Possibly the "Very Late '80s Music Video" category, even.
--

I need to write more of the Zanadreths- I have a scene in the works where Aya has her first and third companies out on endurance training, and she's taking a bath in a stream, because the mud is pretty fierce on the road north from Shaivhen. And Liall shows up, and it looks vaguely like the set up for some bad lesbian porn. Porn does not happen, of course- Aya is more Ishkhahareni at heart than Liall is in that respect. The whole scene is mostly just an excuse for me to play with Templar's story. So the whole scene is Liall telling Aya the tale of the Templar, and Aya beginning to confront Liall about the murders.

It's possible Aya and Liall have better chemistry than Aya and Nick, so that's something I need to work on.

The other Zanadreths scene I want to write is the one where Aya introduces them both to Silverlock- who, at that point, is nearing the end of his mage apprenticeship. The meet up in a bar somewhere, and as soon as Aya and Liall get up to fetch more drinks, Silverlock gives Nick the "break her heart and I'll crush your soul and violate your body in a thousand heinous ways" speech. Nick's upbringing shows itself in rather nasty ways here- Rothcar is rather blase about same sex couples, but Akvaria tends to view them in a rather negative light. Akvaria has some strong anti-non-human sentiment, and they're not overly fond of same sex couples. Mostly, though, Nick is violently opposed to sex outside of marriage, and that's the source of his dislike of Silverlock.

This burns Aya a bit, since she wants the people she cares about to get along, but there's nothing to be done about it, really.
--

I want to write the scene where Jarrek DeLavrey walks into Theron's office and demands to know what happened to his children. Of course, the only people in at the time are Bren and Stella, and once Bren figures out who he's talking to, he goes into starstruck fanboy mode. It's kind of cute. And Stella gets to be sane, which doesn't happen nearly as often as it ought.

And I want to write the scene where Edrana Coralin drags Theron out of the city and takes him roadtripping around to all of her old stomping grounds. She's his older sister in spirit; her army of zombies actually managed to sack Shaivhen, while his just made it to the borders of Murundcar.

She feels even less guilt than he does for killing thousands of people (Theron's death count is higher, but only because there were more people in his era), even though she's more at fault than he was. Theron went crazy fairly early on; Eddy was sane the whole time. And Theron at least feels bad for screwing over Bren- Edrana killed Siegfried's entire family and ate their brains in front of him, but she never so much as apologizes.

("Woman-"

"If I touch you again you'll rip of my limbs and feed them to stray cats?" Bluish black outlines of butterflies swarmed over her arms; they seemed to shift and crawl when she moved.

He stopped short. "How did you know I was going to say that?"

She walked past him. "I said the exact same thing to Joradi when I was your age. Come on, I want to show you the place where I reanimated a dragon's corpse and made it kill its nest mates." She pointed to a place high up the cliffs.

Theron scrambled to catch up with her.)
--

I really want to write (though I'd never post them here) the first time Blaine and Silverlock have sex, and the first time Orrin and Silverlock have sex. The former has a few really beautiful moments, and the latter a few hilarious moments. And both showcase how very different Silverlock's relationships with the two of them are. Not better, not worse, just different. (Okay, Orrin may be a little better. He's happy as so few of my characters are; he leads a charmed life and knows it, and is profoundly grateful for it. He lacks the ridiculous emotional baggage Blaine had.)

It's also interesting to see how Silverlock relates to the people he cares about on a physical level...and, hey, porn. I think it's hot, but they're my characters, so I suppose I ought to.

(This is not part of either of those scenes; this is just Silverlock and Orrin being dumb.)
("So, now what?" Orrin had him pinned to the bed, with an obscenely smug look on his face.

"Well," he shifted his hips and watched Orrin's eyes briefly roll back in his head, "I was thinking you could fuck me. And then," he glanced at the clock, whose blinking numbers told him he wouldn't be getting any sleep tonight anyway, and he might as well give in to the inevitable. "I'm going to make pancakes."

"Pancakes?" Orrin seemed dubious.

"I'm hungry. And if I'm hungry now, I'll be hungry later, too." He spoke as though to a particularly slow-witted small child. He rolled his hips again, eliciting another blinded-by-lust expression from Orrin. "I'm also horny. And I will still be horny later if you don't get on with it.")

I'm a little bit in love with Orrin. He's very much who Tyrin could have become, had he survived past 16. And I love Faraz, because I needed a six and a half foot tall druid in my head. (She's so hardcore her internal organs are made of titanium.)

I want to write the scene where Orrin introduces Silverlock to the other four. Faraz adores him from the start, of course, as does Lindra. Ravi is a bit protective of Orrin and doesn't entirely approve, and Lorreth spends the evening very quietly hyperventilating, because he majored in arcane history and wrote his senior thesis on leechmagick in the Fourth Era Riftwar.

("I quoted you. In my master's dissertation. Does Orrin know you were an assassin? And that you helped acquit Theron Shanretha in the Radrezarian Genocide trials? Or that you've been sleeping with Anna DeLavrey? He's clueless sometimes, but if you hurt him I'll kill you. I'll mine your brain for research on my AD project and throw your body in the river."

Silverlock smirked and reached out with his senses; Eleth's soul was slippery and elusive, but if he could get a good look at it-

The sudden irony of Eleth defending Orrin was almost enough to make him sick. "I would sooner tear out my own eyes," he said gravely, all good humor gone. "Now if you'll excuse me, Mister Hjordiss, I need to get myself very drunk very quickly."

The others were whole and healthy, if surrounded by a faint aura of permanent bemusement- but Aya, alien and bright and beautiful, hadn't made the transition intact. The wounded shreds of her soul hung about Eleth like a shroud.)

The last scene I want to write is the one where Orrin and Faraz bust some skulls and rescue Tim from a bunch of drunken frat boys. Poor Tim- he was a baby when the tower opened, so no one realized he was one of the Soulless, until Silverlock meets him, and LOLs his head off.

this is serious business!

You know what I want? I want someone to write the fic where Jamie popped out another clone between X-Factor 11 and 12, and had sex with Ric in addition to Theresa and Monet.

...yeah, so I'm shallow, but dude. The thing with Siryn and Victoria in the first issue, Ric coming out as bisexual, all of Jamie's little asides in Mad(d)rox. (Mm, consistency of spelling. How I miss you sometimes.) In just about every issue, PAD makes some comment on Jamie's inability to make decisions because he can see the benefits of every path available. I mean, really. It's only a matter of time before Jamie comes out of the closet too. It's practically text at this point.

Also, it'd be hot. And there'd be no ridiculous drama, because Ric would sort of be all, "So, you're just a dupe, right?" And the dupe would go, "Yup, wanna screw?" And that'd be the end of it, until Jamie reabsorbed all his dupes the next morning and went "W. T. F." And then at some point later Ric would go, "Soooo..." and Jamie would kind of '>.> and then they'd have sex again. And it would be good.

I, um, love X-Factor. Because Peter David remembers that all of the characters have years worth of preexisting canon- canon that happened when he wasn't writing. I don't entirely approve of Monet being suicidal, but it works when looked at over the backdrop of everything else that has happened to her character. Same with Theresa being delusional, and Ric being sulky (oh wait, he was like that before).

I'm also maybe a little bit in love with Layla Miller, and the way she rescues people by crashing pizza delivery vans, and kills them with leaky pipes. I can't wait to see where PAD goes with the whole Singularity/Damien Tryp thing, and whether or not he fixes the decimation.

And, in other news, Peter David writing the Dark Tower comic? Makes me so happy. Peter David writing just about anything makes me so happy. But the fact that Dark Tower doesn't suck fills me with immense joy. And mmm, Steven Deschain, you sexy, angry beardy man. This comic, unlike the Neverwhere comic, is an example of how a book, or parts of a book, are properly adapted to the medium of comics.