amisophe

for example, a few days ago there was a solar eclipse.

( here, have a giant picture. )

we looked at it through x-rays :D rare astronomical events are really the best. you look at this and it's like being there, closer to the sun, in the cold dark of outer space as heavenly bodies spin and interact with each other in some kind of cosmic dance. and I'm reminded of how every time we look at something there's a little bit of time travel going on, and why do we exist anyway, and it really brings out the Star Trek nerd in me /o\ and the Saporta-esque secret spiritual philosopher, for that matter.

(it's really great.)

anyway. school is stressful, family visits are too, and even hanging out with just me and the computer can make me want to huddle under a blanket, but they all have their powers of attraction so I do them anyway. and the semester is finally finally over. I have to stay for the summer, but I have a gender-neutral dorm and a smaller workload consisting solely of sociology and music, so I'm still looking forward to enjoying it. as long as I don't perish from destitution and misplaced financial priorities due to the Used being on Warped \o/

also I have seen Avengers (but not yet the rest of the movies, so I don't understand everything yet! but LOKI. PHIL COULSON. :( FEELINGS ABOUT EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THAT MOVIE, I UNDERSTAND.)

I am really quite vulnerable to feelings in general right now, so, you know. Tom Hiddleston? One Direction? Gerard? Waybros? (Waybros <3) Avatar (of the ATLA kind)? Brendon? HIT ME.

(that is the subject line of the series of emails that has resulted in this. I therefore make no pretense at this being even close to real fic, and it really is just girlmarauders and I flailing at each other but WHATEVER. I'M SHARING.)

( contains TAI and hitting. have fun. )

so, you know. HOW IS EVERYONE :D? I have one more week of chaos and then BREAK. and I will finally have time to angst about my future and my place in the world and all the opportunities I'm going to miss /o\

so, I made a mix for bandomreversebb!

so emo you can't stand it (mediafire)


mixer notes: I've always wanted to do something more traditionally participatory in bandom, but been too intimidated by the prospect of writing for people. /o\ So the concept of a reverse big bang was appealing, and the experience of feeling all contributory novel and exciting. I felt like my mix was maybe too loud to have been a soundtrack to an already-written fic, but it was fascinating trying to tell a story with music first, especially given that I didn't want to give any other parameters, just see what story came directly out of the songs. Of course, that could be both a blessing and a curse to an author, so thank you so much to solarbaby614 for taking this on - your concept was completely unexpected and yet I can totally see how the music would have provided the atmosphere for it. It's a fascinating, chilling combination of high school AU and horror mystery, where death is common enough to create questions but too common for these Jersey boys to bother answering them.

fic: Paper Monsters (also on DW)
fic/mix masterpost: here.

even less officially titled "subby!ian and other incarnations." so, uh. you asked for it. /o\

I'll have you know that searching my pictures folder for "ian" returns 143 results. and it hasn't been updated in a while. I will just...start from the top left, then.

( Ian, thank you for existing. )

so. about this.

I am reviving the thing I wrote the time I guest-edited my informal honors dorm newsletter around the height of the SOPA debacle, because it's kind of relevant. Frank wants to know positive effects of the internet? I'll give you positive effects of the internet!

In high school history class, our teacher once showed us a journalistic documentary on life in North Korea. It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen. Did you know apparently North Korean citizens have a dress code? And of course there’s the fact that all the media the government lets out for us to see shows the population as a mass of people blindly worshipping their leader, children with blank smiles and choreographed uniformity. But I have to say, the thing that terrified me the most was when the journalist visited a college – and the students didn’t know what Google was.

Can you imagine living in a world without Google? I had to do some research on how the internet works once, and I remember turning to my parents, helplessly confused: how did people surf the internet before search engines as we know them? Turns out there was (almost) always a way to search for things; it was just different. But for a moment there, I had to picture a world where you couldn't.

I know some professional killjoys would be ecstatic at the idea of the wired generation, sans internet. Because the internet is dangerous, right? It’s dangerous and full of technobabble and a waste of time. Ten-year-olds go online, talk to strangers and end up murdered in ditches! Six-year-olds might – gasp – accidentally see someone with their pants off! (I’m sure they care.) Sixteen-year-olds might deliberately see someone with their pants off! (Let’s cry rape.) Twenty-year-olds spend class time on the computer, oh noes, their attention span might be divided! You can’t do calculus and listen to music at the same time, neither of them will be quite as perfect. You can’t listen to an argument about Mercutio and RSVP a meeting at the same time. You can’t do math homework in English. Kids these days are so distracted all the time – I remember when kids were so well-behaved, they never daydreamed. Or they’d have been hit with a ruler.

Except. The internet is also how tens of thousands of people have managed to grow up with a world of refuge where not only could you read about other people being gay, but it wasn’t a big deal, where the universe is bigger than a high school of two thousand people and contains middle school dropouts with college vocabularies, teenagers with guitars in garages, nobel laureates getting drunk, homeless people with a cause and seven-year-olds with a dream. Where a clinically depressed fifteen-year-old can cry for help into the ether – and get it, in the form of hugs they’d never get in real life and poetry and confidence and passion. Where a kid living in the middle of nowhere (population 52) can learn how to build a hot air balloon from scratch, how to write in Cyrillic, how to play Stairway to Heaven, how to eat vegan, how to write to make people cry. Where a seventeen-year-old in Chicago can become best friends with a fifty-two-year-old in Melbourne. Where someone can sing ‘til they cry for someone they’ve never met who’s dying of cancer, and be heard.

The internet exposed the dark underbellies of a lot of people, made it easier to ruin people’s lives by being anonymously vicious. It also let out the side of people whose art burns brightest in despair and who care enough to talk to someone halfway across the world and explain their experiences to the living room, bring together crowds from Kazakhstan to Alaska to sing in a common language, and raise enough money to save a multiple sclerosis patient across an ocean without health insurance because they once wrote you a poem.

The internet is dangerous. It can and has toppled governments – at the will of the people. That is its power, that it can accomplish nothing that is not the will of a critical mass of people, given a virtual focal point. Break the direct connection between the thoughts of an autistic kid in France and the computer screen of an inmate in Louisiana with an ipod, and you’ve broken the power of the people. That’s why governments will keep trying. And that’s why we gotta fight back.

hi everyone! guess what? In my writing class this semester, we have to save the world.

Well, we pick a social justice issue and write about it for all our projects, and for the final "put it out in the public eye" somewhere. And writing about something you care about is always simultaneously a lot easier and much, much harder, especially if you pick something radical or controversial. Because it flows, but you're so invested in getting it across right.

ugh. I just want to do everything perfectly. I have to pick something I can actually write about for all the assignments, and I'm gravitating toward age-based censorship and how it hurts sexual minority youth, but I want to write about so much more in the background for that and I'm not sure I can fit it all in. /o\

in any case. finally off to backread!

the following things have happened, in unreliable order:

1) I traveled halfway around the world, twice. While I was in India, there was a cyclone. It flooded the beach a day after we went there. Providence, or something. It also exploded something important in the area's electrical system, so the power went out for a while, but this is a regular occurrence and not worthy of worry. Or something. Also, India is not particularly made for closeted transpeople, which meant awkward questions about why I wore the same thing every day (the "same thing" meaning a t-shirt and pants, why didn't I ever wear, like, color? don't you want some fun in your wardrobe? also, you stick out like a sore thumb) and offers of flowers to put in your hair. They smelled devastatingly good, though. And I suppose "girls' outings" and discussions with grandparents about "your future husband" aren't particularly culture-specific, anyway. Whatever. I was quite impressed with the national newspaper, though; they seem very up-to-date and progressive about issues still being "debated" by Tea Partiers in the US.

And we can't be that different when the current viral pop song is this:

No, seriously. My cousins felt the need to bring me up to speed on this; I'm just passing on the favor. I'm sorely tempted to take this to my linguistics professors and have them analyze what fucking language this is. Because guess what? No, really, watch it once. Then take a guess what kolaveri (yeah, the only actual Tamil vocabulary in the song) means: murderous rage.

Yeah. Need a replay? Never want to hear it ever ever again? But it's art! Just look at how brilliantly unexpected that is! It makes my interpretation of the song radically different. Like, the one single powerful moment in a sea of predictability is that word. It makes the song (or the rest of the song is just fucking out of place, really, and is depending on kolaveri for meaning).

Never keep me away from the internet for this long, guys, I start taking this shit seriously.

2) ETA: oh, and also LJ fucked itself over. I read most of my flist on LJ, and am used to posting and then importing. A lot of people are moving primarily to DW now, but my flist - dwircle - on DW is too different from my flist on LJ to make that convenient - or I just fail at something technical, which is also possible. I may just have to customize LJ more.

3) I came out as trans to my sister. By email. asldfjl you guys. Her response? "Does this mean I can tell my friends I have a big brother now?" JUST SO YOU KNOW, I LOVE YOU.

4) I came out as trans to the rest of my family. I was really OCD about how and when to say it, which is never fun because when I don't get to go through with my plan I think everything is ruined and nothing can ever be just right again. I kid, but...I really don't. Whatever. It happened, I may not ever get the ~ideal reaction I could have gotten if I said it at just the right moment but just because it didn't have the full effect doesn't mean they hate me forever. I'll just - have to deal with my own emotional issues. Because my parents are supportive - or supportive people, anyway - and I can't expect them to know all the terminology and experiencial bits and pieces about being trans that I'm used to. "You don't have to experience dysphoria" is something I can respond to, as long as they're still on my side at the DMV. The whole still referring to me with female pronouns and female-specific relationship words thing is...not actually as jarring in itself as the perception that they don't even seem to have thought about it or recognize it might be a problem, but. That's what I was afraid of, and I need to stop blaming myself for not coming out right and start responding as if I did.

And I'm sorry y'all needed to hear my pep talk. /o\

5) I cut my hair. I now look like a stereotypical butch lesbian in a lot of ways (I can't imagine how many problems there are with saying that's one identity with one way of presenting, but that is pretty much the only way I've heard that look described) but I knew that would happen, and I don't care that much because short hair omg I don't even need a separate towel to dry it and that is enough for now.

6) I went to the DMV to get a state ID, because I still can't really drive /o\ and I don't have any other proof of address, and my mom thought I should do that while I'm here. Filled out the form, got to the gender tickybox, sighed. This is why I didn't want to do this, mom. "Why not just tick the M box?" "...because you need a doctor's note." "So if they ask, we'll change it. It's worth a try, right?" ...so I did. And they took it and didn't even say anything. \o? In her words, "this is California." But who knows if they'll call back later and complain about errors in processing, so. Tentative victory, anyway. (I was fucking shaking.)

7) And now, what this post is really an excuse for (mostly): ~great storytelling on twitter! Which was perhaps in honor of More Joy Day before I even realized it was More Joy Day, because serendipity. Or, I asked for something, and then bohemeyourself joined in, and this happened, and what could possibly bring more joy?

@amisophe: dear internet, where is the fic where the first time brendon pulls ian's hair and sees his ~reaction he's like "oh! must use on stage!" and he's not much more thoughtful than that,

but it ends up Ian can't handle how bden's all casual about it, because it feels ~clinical even though it's not quite, and it's getting him all wound up and angsty and lonely and eventually he has to confront bden and be like "dude you gotta stop this thing"

and bden's like "wait what you should have said if it bothered you! okay! I'll just...spend more time in dallon's stage-space to make up for it?" and then ian starts missing it. he didn't know how comforting that touch was until he lost it, okay

but now what can he possibly say? "actually I want you to touch me and pull my hair" sounds a lot weirder than "don't touch me." it sounds like an admission. but he can't just keep saying nothing, it's killing him. but saying anything would make it weird. so.

and then resolution! I don't know what the resolution is, okay, it's a ~dilemma. but there should be one.

( the rest, because eventually this should be written. by everyone )

er, right. I feel like I should make a sticky post or something explaining this particular...perk of being my friend? because, see, I have epic social anxiety issues. This usually results in avoiding ALL the social interaction, even the social interaction that makes me :D all over the place, because it scares me to death if I'm not in the middle of it. (Because that makes total sense.) Sometimes this means enjoying an RL conversation (:D!) and then hiding in my room with tea and the internet for the next day, reading all the fic, and then sometimes that leads to enjoying fandom interaction! (:D!) and then hiding from the internet. Which, you know, not fun. Usually starts with curling up and hiding my face in my knees and feeling my thoughts loop around and press down and down until I can only breathe if I don't consider myself capable of social interacting ever again. And then I realize that if I ever want to :D again I need to catch up on all the talking I've been avoiding, which leads to avoiding even more and walking around for an hour in literally freezing temperatures with my earphones turned up and my mind frantic and begging for something to jolt me out of it and let the words flow outwards instead.

And then I go and pour the words out all in one breath, and hope the cycle doesn't go down again. And then it does.

but this is not a sticky post, because actually it's about everything I've felt the urge to say in...about a week. Yay finals. (Also...yeah.)

So! last weekend I made noises about the necessity of a list of stun gun fic, because obviously there was a fuckton of it, and verbyna encouraged me to make said list, and I happily ventured into the depths of google and all bookmarking services in existence, gave up on actual stun guns and settled for any fic inspired by it, or mentioning it, and found...five? Most of which I'm pretty sure everyone knows about already?

Not Just Lashing Out, first part of the Figuring It Out series by littlemousling (ETA: I shall add a podfic by bohemeyourself. :D)

untitled commentfic by bohemeyourself

Feedback Loop by verbyna

Hurt So Good by alainaartists

untitled commentfic by littlemousling

so I am COMPLETELY BAFFLED. I swear it feels like there was a tsunami of fic following that, so where is the rest? PLEASE HELP. Find what I'm missing, I'm begging you.

and finally, other things what have been on my mind:

This. WHAT EVEN.

daily sporadic music recs, of which I have several stored up, and maybe if I throw a bunch of earworms at you all at once they won't get stuck in your head like they did for me? That's what I should do this weekend. And also listen to all the voice posts!

This fic oh my god: Raise Around Your Bones by jukeboxghost. This fic was significantly responsible for getting me out of the most recent brainloop. It is from January 2010 (yeah, I know) so you may have read it already? But if you have not DO SO OH MY GOD. It's a Panic hardcore!AU (I seem to remember that being mentioned in the context of a picspam as SHOULD EXIST) and is described in summary as "an ode to live music," which is really what it is. It's an epic ballad. I don't know how else to explain how intense it is, but this is how I tried: "Like the roughest best parts of a show, all tangled up with the softest best parts of life, and the other way around, and idek if I'm trying to sound poetic or what but this was just so real. Really an ode to live music. This let me feel it, just like going to a concert and rediscovering the way it feels like the music and the people and the experience mean everything in that moment, encompass the whole world, and you go out and it feels like you can't breathe and you want to do it all over again. I want to do it all over again."

basically, READ IT. (Unless you want to write a hxc!AU of your own, without inadvertent influence? In that case I WOULD NOT STOP YOU WAITING.)

also, my most recent overemotional reaction: Folie à Deux is so fucking amazing. (I know, I know, but I actually...have never heard it through?) And I don't have it, so hearing I Don't Care just gave me flashbacks to waiting in an empty Bay Area parking lot and singing, home and the wonder of musical discovery, and oh Patrick's voice and the overwhelming sadness and these are lyrics, I've never even heard some of these songs before and they're making me cry with nostalgia and how does something so beautiful hurt so much I physically can't breathe, ow my heart.

so I was visiting my family during the days most people were doing the bandom voice meme, and then I figured people were done with it, but then la_dissonance did it and I was like \o/

so I talked a lot. YOU MUST FORGIVE ME FOR I'VE NEVER VOICE POSTED BEFORE AND IT WAS FUN AND EXCITING.

bandom voice meme by amisophe

the questions!

1. What's your username and is there a story behind it?
2. Where are you from and where do you live now?
3. What are you wearing? Yes, I am hitting on you.
4. How long have you been in bandom? How did you get into it?
5. Which bands are your favorites?
6. Which band members are your favorites?
7. Have you seen any of them in concert? Any fun stories or memories to share?
8. Do you have an OTP? What is it, and why do you love it?
9. What story do you wish someone would write?
10. Are you working on something for bandom right now? Tell us a little bit about it.
11. You've got fic open somewhere on your computer right now, don't lie. So go to one of your open tabs or word documents or whatever, and read us a couple of lines.
12. Say these words: Iero, haberdashery, LOLcat, flist, dirigible, halcyon, nemesis, ephemeral, languorous

because Pete Wentz. Tweeted a link yesterday to a short film he acted in a ~year ago that’s essentially bdsm pseudo-porn with a creepy plot. Involves drowning/breathplay, implied incest/childhood sexual abuse, kidnapping, bondage, a potentially genderqueer character, complex danger dynamics and fucked-up relationships.

Basically, Pete pwns us all at fandom. Best role model, best life choices, Pete, ily.

Did anyone ever write off this? Or was the general consensus YOU DID IT BETTER?