rats

By way of explanation

This is a list of lists, essentially. You are welcome--nay, encouraged--to offer suggestions to basically any list, especially the trope ones (but also personal taste ones, whatevs). I ultimately reserve the right not to add your suggestions to the main posts, but I'd love to hear them and will leave them up in comments. ♥ There's also blah-blah-blah prewriting stuff that's friends-only, but trust me that you're probably not interested in that.

You are welcome to add this journal. Unless I feel comfortable with you reading my blah-blah-blah prewriting things (worldbuilding, character sheets, et cetera), though, errata will not add you back. And I'm fairly sensitive about those things, for the record, so.

Dragon Theory

Because they refer to dragons as "gendering" rather than saying that their sex is now deducible, I have decided that for my personal dragon mythos, they are born neither male nor female and consciously choose one or the other just before their maturation. Their will affects their socially perceived gender, their sex organs, and, if relevant to the breed, their secondary sex characteristics.

Unfortunate downside is that it's very much a binary, but that is a constraint of the game. I presume there are dragons unseen who choose not to choose, or choose to fall somewhere in between, or outside the male-female spectrum entirely. DRAGONS OF ALL VARIETIES, OUT THERE SOMEWHERE, CHOOSING CHOOSING.

>>

PG rated movies with some pretty un-PG-by-today's-general-standards content

• Harold and Maude
• The Graduate
• Sixteen Candles
• Jaws
• Logan's Run
• Bad News Bears
• Poltergeist
• Ghostbusters
• Big
• Airplane!
• Planet of the Apes is actually rated G
• Spaceballs
• Grease
• Benny and Joon
• Tommy
• Psycho
• The Goonies
• Hair
•

Blah blah blah, PG-13 was not created until the mid-80s and PG basically served as that, but I think it is kind of fascinating to see what "parental guidance" means today in comparison to previously. When in doubt, please assume that I mean the original version of the films as opposed to the remakes.

Assorted thoughts about songs that remind me of other songs and so on

1. "Alphabet Town" sounds to me like if Elliott Smith listened to Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" and decided to write his own version--musically as opposed to thematically. Yeah, I know it's mostly the presence of the harmonica that's pushing me this way, but listen to how he uses it, man. I ship these songs in my head, by which I mean, they go nicely together for me, like white wine and a nice fish.
2. The guitar riff (for lack of a more accurate phrase) in Glenn Hansard / Market Irglova's "Falling Slowly" (you know, the song from Once that won an academy award and was once featured in the background of a Mary Worth comic) reminds me heavily of the melody to the words "I was broken for a long time but it's over now" in RPattz's "I Was Broken."

Yeah, this list is going to be inane stuff when it gets off the ground. Don't tell me you're surprised.

ASOIAF house words translated into (hopefully accurate) French
Stark: L'hiver arrive
Greyjoy: Nous ne semons pas / On ne seme pas
Arryn: Aussi haut qu'honneur
Hightower: Nous éclairons le passage / On éclaire le passage
Lannister: Ecoutez-moi rugir
Tully: Famille, Devoir, Honneur
Targaryen: Feu et sange

TO BE CONTINUED.

You know what I noticed relatively recently?

While I dig the femslash, I have very few femslash OTPs.

I mean, most of my current otps are het overall, but I can look back into my slash-happy past and find plenty of dudes that I've shipped together. It is not exactly so for the ladies.

The problem, near as I can figure out, is the fact that either I'll only have one chick I want to slash in a given fandom or I'll have multiple slashable women who're all a part of the Central Group. For instance, I was looking for Tonks femslash a few weeks back (which is when I first noticed this problem), and I realized that literally none of the pairings available appealed to me at all. Shipping her with Trio-era kids does nothing for me, and the only other options appear to be: shipping her with people from her mother's generation (or older); shipping her with characters who're essentially a name and maybe a sentence-long description, like Hestia Jones; or creating an original character to ship her with (which doesn't seem like a particularly popular choice in most cases). In her case, none of the possibilities appeal superhard to me. I did find a Fleur/Tonks fic that was quite good, but aside from that, I'm back to my usual Remus/Tonks otp.

Or, on the other end, I'm willing to ship basically any of the members of the Baby-Sitters Club--but not with each other well, maaaaaaybe Claudia and Stacey, but only for special occasions. As I age, I grow less and less fond of the idea of incest, for lack of a better term, within the Main Group Of Friends that a story focuses on. So I really enjoy the various femslashy fics out there about their charges, or the occasions that a non-BSC schoolmate's half the pairing--that Haley/Tiffany one strikes me as being mostly awwwww, for instance, and there's an excellent Cokie/Kristy--but I can't get my engine revved for reading about, say, Kristy and Dawn macking on each other in the barn or something. Similarly, while I'd kill to read piles and piles of femslash for Thirteen on House, her and Cuddy and/or Cameron going at it is entirely unappealing to me, and there's a bizarre dearth of Thirteen-does-random-strangers (or is it all hidden away behind friends-locks? INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW because it is my favourite ship for the series, Thirteen/Random Stranger *eyeroll*), from what I've seen.

I don't know if it's a problem with me and my apparently overly-exacting standards regarding femslash ships, or if I can blame it on a world where there simply aren't enough shippable women who aren't all a part of the main protagonist circle. Am I the only one who has a hard time finding appealing femslash ships, or is this something the greater fandom population (okay, the greater fandom population on the search for femslash) struggles with, too?

And yes, this journal is turning into "barely-started lists and asinine fandom thoughts and flocked story ideas" instead of just "really neat lists and flocked story ideas I will someday use /o/" real quick. DX

Famous People Who Moved To Brooklyn
1. Elliott Smith
2. Alison Bechdel

It is much harder to come up with a list of people who moved to Brooklyn than people who came from Brooklyn.

I Like My (Wo)Men Like I Like My...:
1. Coffee: Irish.
2. Coffee: Fulla booze. Aware that these two are nearly identical, ys.
3. Coffee: Drowned in milk.
4. Coffee: Churned into ice cream and covered with chocolate syrup.
5. Coffee: As far from my mouth as humanly possible.
6. Coffee: On ice.
7. Baked Alaska: Set on fire for dramatic effect.
8. Goldfish: Swallowed whole by Harvard alums circa 1930.
9. Cream: Whipped.
10. Guitars: Beaten into smithereens at the end of a rockshow.
11.

Inspired by this. PLEASE HELP ME THINK OF SOME MORE IF YOU FEEL LIKE IT because I like these and am terrible at coming up with them. >>

eta! IT CAN BE LIKE YOUR ANYTHING. Suddenly, they are easier and more hilarious. Especially when they are non-sequiturs.

Things that bother me in Pushing Daisies

1. Chuck is always referred to as a girl, both by Emerson and by the narrator. Emerson might call Ned "Pie Boy," but the narration allows for a more adult "the Piemaker." Imagine their places reversed--can you really see aliveagain!Ned being called "the boy called Ned"?

2. There is indication that Ned has had intimate relationships prior to Chuck, if embarrassing, bearskin-rug filled ones. The only indication of sexuality on Chuck's part, pre-Ned, is reading dirty novels belonging to Lily (?).

3. The implication that a girl should end up with her first kiss is weird and kind of skeezy, especially when her first kiss happens at the age of nine. Does that feel to anyone else like it suggests her development of character is basically complete at that point? Is that not incredibly weird and gross and insulting?

4. Chuck doesn't get to bring any friends into the group. Emerson and Olive belong to Ned, and neither particularly like her at first. Lily and Vivian are occasional walk-ons, but they basically belong to Olive at this point in time. Chuck's father, the only person she gets to choose to have contact with over a multi-episode business? He takes off. Chuck has Ned, but Chuck is Ned's walk-on, as it were.

5. Crunched because of time, I'm sure--given that the Oscar Verbinius (check spelling when it's not 1:30 DX) storyline was supposed to be 4-5 episodes long, it better have been--but every time Ned and Chuck have some kind of spat, it's essentially resolved by the end of the episode. Chuck never gets to get properly angry at Ned or anyone else. She gets to be tearful and sad-looking, and maybe sometimes there's anger underneath that (the final episodes of the second season go that direction, especially the very last one), but she's sort of missing a properly pissed-off mode and in my opinion, kind of seems like she should have one. And maybe getting angry involves crying for her, and that's fine. I know it does for me a lot. But Chuck seems to slip into sad-quiet-crying; she's unhappy, but she's incredibly docile about her unhappiness.

6. Chuck is not only basically immortal, she's ageless. Which is a nice plus for Ned, as far as His Perfect Woman goes, I'm sure.

7. The fuck is Chuck's job? She gets to have a share in their little mini-detective agency, okay. She helps out at the Pie Hole. But pies are not primarily Her Thing, and neither is detectiving (even if she gets to use her language skills and etc. on occasion). Everyone else has a thing they enjoy or enjoyed, and which they do or did for a living at some point. Chuck has hobbies that help other people's Things out. I get it, she has to hide from the world, but this is a universe where she can call herself Kitty Pimms and they don't go "Okay, SSN?" She could have a job, theoretically.

8. Why do we see teenaged!Chuck but never teenaged!Ned? Why do we have Anna Friel rouged up and put in pigtails, but never Lee Pace in a schoolboy's uniform? And to be honest, on a completely unrelated note, I'd love to know about Ned's teenage years, because they are not basically touched at all, and I bet they were hilaaaaariously awkward.

9. How often does this show pass the Bechdel test? Often enough when Olive talks to Lily and Vivian, I imagine, but whenever Chuck talks to Olive, it almost always comes around to Ned some way or another. And that bugs me. Yes, they're in a triangle and that's awkward, but they both have interests outside of Ned--that much is clear. But the majority of their conversations? Ned. Nednednednedned.

I suspect it all boils down to one question: Don't we ever get tired of the fresh-faced ingénue? Especially when she's supposed to be nearly thirty? Couldn't we have a girl-next-door who's allowed to grow up some? The series wanted to, I think (hope), and eventually, maybe it would have gotten there. As it is, though, there are things that seriously bother me and that don't seem to be getting addressed anywhere--in fandom, by the creators, by other bloggers.

I want to see these things, and all those that I forgot or never noticed, addressed by other people. Preferably the creators, in interviews and comics and whatever you like, but by fandom, too. I wish I could write it up in a metafandom-worthy sort of way, but I'm betting I can't motivate myself to, lolfail.

Every girl has to have a hobby, right? Today (and until I finish this project), mine's gonna be listening to one-hit-wonders from the 90s. With the hope that Wikipedia's list is full and complete (and tbh, I don't think it is, because where the fuck is "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" and "Rico Suave"?), I am going to listen to every damned song on there. Maybe I'll learn something, maybe I'll get all nostalgic, or maybe I'll just be glad that you don't hear "Rump Shaker" too much on the radio anymore. We'll see.

I started off with the last song on the list, but from here on out, I'm going chronologically. I'm also not going to skip songs I know I've listened to in the past. While that means that I'm stuck listening to "Baby I Love Your Way," I also get to hit "Candy" and "Counting Blue Cars" and good stuff like that. It evens out. Theoretically.

Italicized are songs that I can't find on Youtube or last.fm OR even iTunes. To which I say, WTF. It seriously freaks me out how things can fall through the cracks like that, lost to the sands of time and etc.

( the list, as provided by Wikipedia )

( thoughts )

( songs I think should probably be on this list )