i melt vanilla ice like silicone
1. IF THIS DOES NOT MAKE YOU SMILE WHEN YOU SEE IT THEN YOU HAVE NO SEOUL. HAAAHAHAH "SEOUL" OH I KILL ME no seriously, you're dead inside
2. PRON BATTLE AT 51STCENTURYFOX'S HOUSE: SASS ON THE PLASS (I call it arse on the plarse) THEMES: TOYS, TELEPATHY, THE PLASS. OH YEAH BABAY, GO FORTH AND PORNTIFICATE.
3. A while back, I did this meme where I had people give me sections of my fic, and I would like do a DVD commentary them. So I did like three and lost steam, but I found the file in my lj folder, so I thought I would dust it off and shit.
From To Let for lefaym
The box is light and when you shake it, something that seems like cloth fwrrrms around inside, so you undo the string and pull the paper back, opening the small cardboard box that used to hold, according to the writing on its side, disposable pens.
Okay so. OMG I HAVE THINGS TO SAY. 1. I made that word up. I love making words up for sounds. Like I have a word for cardstock on wood, and a word for Ianto tying a tie. I love making up sound words. I am sure there's a technical term for that, and it's not onomatopoeia. I have a word for the sound you get when you squeeze the air out of a closed plastic bag that has a leak. I like these things.
I thought this would be a big moment here, because you would know the box is from Torchwood, but it would be kind of poignant, because in the first story the narrator learns the name of Torchwood from a pen ze finds in the sofa.
The sticker in the corner, the one the factory affixes to the box to show the design on the pen for easy differentiation, reads the very familiar 'Torchwood.'
That fucking clue. Sarah grips your arm a little because you had already told her about Ianto and Torchwood, of seeing Jack in the street. The two of you have already toasted his memory.
And then I add that in for those of you who have forgotten about the pen and need to have it spelled out. No really, that's all that's there for. And also clue you in to the fact that Sarah already knows, and then you don't go "Hey wait, how does Sarah know?" regardless of the fact that if you'd thought about it, you'd realise that ze probably told her, and we'd never have to have this conversation. Okay. Enough about how much I mistrust you.
Still, some part of you thinks that you are wrong.
This is unnecessary paragraph transition that wouldn't be here at all if I was a better writer.
Inside is a small bundle of cloth. You unfold it; the material was obviously once white but looks to have seen some washing, and so it is that eggshell colour that all white t-shirts get eventually. It is soft and worn and has a pair of women's fake tits painted on it. When you hold it up to look at it, a small card flutters out of the folds and into your lap.
You know, when I thought of the titty shirt, I wish I could describe what I thought it would look like, because originally the boobs on the titty shirt in my head always had a string bikini on, and to this day they sort of do, but I never really mentioned that. And they're airbrushed on the shirt, which is how it holds up so well. I like to think that Ianto wears it every now and then to bed for sentimental reasons. And because Jack isn't an idiot, he picks the right thing to send, the right message, so that he can say as little as possible. I was going to have it end his way, right here, but I thought it was only fair that Jack answer the question that ze asked before Jack drove away.
The same delicate old-style cursive has written out the card, some cream-coloured stock that is sturdy and weighty and means something to this whole conversation more than just tree fibres.
'Saving the world,' it says.
That was me trying to wrap it all up like an episode of Doogie Houser. You may notice that you can sense when my stories are ending because I start to wrap things up, like when the pianist starts playing at church and you know the sermon is wrapping up. Man, that was the best thing ever. You were like, "OMG SOON I WILL BE FREE" So yeah. There you go.
***
From When Taken Apart for electro_club
When they handle it, it's just a thing, a piece of something. It is what Jack has been waiting for-not the heart with its system mapped and catalogued, not the intestines, unraveled and slit apart, flattened as if they are going to make sausage.
My mom had just explained about the intestines and what they do to them in autopsy, and I had to put that in there. I was like, "human intestine sausage? No thanks!"
This, the brain, the seat of every joke, every innovative thought, every attempt at rescue or a memo, or a hastily written seduction on a post it note. This lump of gray that they weigh, that one might use to make headcheese in another country were he another creature altogether. This thing made Jack coffee and chided him when he was careless.
Okay, so I'll admit in this fic that I wanted to do several things a) gross you out, b) force the reader to confront the fact that Ianto is dead and c) reduce Ianto to body parts, chunks of meat, possibly for shock factor, but also to divorce the concept of the physical and the extra. The extra, being much more dire and sad if you are Jack and cannot even convince yourself that there's some sort of something after death, blah blah. It's kind of how I feel when people tell me that a dead person is in a better place, because I don't really believe that. And sometimes I want to remind people of the fact that the thoughts you have re: getting coffee and driving poorly or whatever, are all physical neurons firing, and now it's like a hard drive that stays unused and dead, dusty and about to be cannibalized for parts-the data you used to use to run that computer is still all on there, if you didn't wipe it, and when you break it, you can't really get it back. Unless you're Ripley in Alien 3.
I might have also wanted to walk myself through my husband's autopsy, and in that regard the hardest part was the chest skin pulled up over the face to expose the throat.
When they don't replace it, but put it in a special container for biopsy and stuff his head with newspaper, that is when Jack stops the recording, because really he has seen it, the thing he wanted. Ianto's brain and heart laid open and bandied about like a bundle of rump roasts.
I think this is my favorite sentence in the whole thing except for the first sentence, because I love imagery of lambs and slaughter. Really, it contains the horrific image that the brain, the seat of thought is removed whole from the head and they don't even bother to put it back. It's shoved into a case for study (or rather, part of it is sliced off and the rest is shoved somewhere else. In a biohazard bag for disposal, or in the cavity with the rest of the mucked about organs), and your mind is replaced with the classifieds from yesterday's issue of The Sun. It's almost irreverent. Almost desecration in a way, but that's what life is. Also, I like comparing human organs to meat, because it's taboo.
He would have told Jack that that is all there is, really, right before he might have slammed a magazine into his gun or pulled the car unto a U-turn and blown Jack in the passenger seat. That is all we are Jack, he might have said, but he wouldn't have meant it. His eyes would have said that he hadn't meant it.
Then I threw you a bone. I reminded you that that isn't really Ianto anymore, and not to feel so bad. And then I gave you a visual of Ianto doing what fandom likes him to do best: blowing Jack Harkness. Really fandom, I don't hate you, I just don't think much of us and our reliance on repetition as a whole. I'm in that, too. See at the end there I even had Ianto hint that he believed in an afterlife so that if you wanted to think that he was touched by an angel or something you could.
Jack uploads the video to his wrist strap. He watches it once a year for ten years, just to remind himself.
I really do like this, because I think that a) Jack knows that he's responsible for this, so he'll watch it as a punishment, and b) he knows that he'll forget Ianto, so he does this for a while to rather sear on his brain the responsibility issue. Nothing brings that home like watching your lover's autopsy vid.
He'll rediscover it fifteen hundred years later, and he won't know what it means. It's a morbid thing, and he needs the space.
He deletes it.
But just like Ianto is meat in the end, Jack can't hold on to it forever, and the file becomes as pointless as a sliced intestine, a sectioned brain, a portion of heart or liver that when inside the person who is alive, we see as a whole organism, but can be taken apart, depriving the viewer and themselves of the context of their being. The video loses meaningful context without memory, like looking at a bunch of old photos in the attic-you know they must be related to you, but they don't mean anything because you have no context for them.
I have talked too much. Also, I separated that last line for oral impact.
***
From It's Already Tomorrow in Australia (or Win Some, Lose Some, H7, N1) for used_songs
I snapped my book shut. Roxy tucked hers into the inside of her jacket. "Mine start over at Northwest Hospital in less than an hour." I tried to act as if I didn't know when mine started or where, but I'd seen the first two pages, and it wasn't something I wanted to talk about.
The best thing about writing this wad that I got to confront the sheer NUMBERS of a mass plague. I mean, sure, you reap an accident a day, but then the plague strikes and suddenly you can't get there fast enough.
Mason was already gone. It was funny how no one had really discussed what was about to happen. Maybe the plague boys were too hyped. I mean, face it-after being stuck here for a few hundred years, I might have been eager to start punching my ticket onward too. I wondered just how long until I might fade out and go…wherever.
Also, I wanted the plague boys to get a break.
I'd always wondered just what the quota was on reaps. If it was totally arbitrary, were there some people who did like, maybe four reaps and then moved on? Was it tied to karma? If I did weeks of these reaps, would I be promoted? And was it heaven? And who would be there? Would I see the people I'd reaped? And would they hold it against me? Would Betty be there? I hadn't thought about her in months.
These are all questions I asked myself re: the show. I like the idea what it's an arbitrary quota, and there's people who have reaped 560000 people and are still here and some chick from Des Moines became a reaper and moved on after like 12 reaps. That it's random and not linked to ANYTHING.
Also, it's fun to ask questions in fact that you don't intend to answer. I did this a lot when I used to write lit papers, and it worked. My professors would write "hrm, that's a good question!" and "yes!" in the margins of my paper and never really realise that I'd never proved my thesis (I don't like to commit to one answer)
Was this the big one? Was this the end of the world? It was hard not to suddenly go apocalyptic when your reap count for the day was probably three hundred. Then again, had Guy once thought that the bubonic plague was the end of the world?
Once again, I don't plan on answering any of these. LOL also, I do this inner narration to skip physical action. Like while this monologue would be playing on the screen, if you have ever seen the show, you would know that the action doesn't stop. You can fill in what you think is happening. It usually shit you don't need described.
It took me a second to realize that nearly everyone had left, and I was still standing there with a vacant expression and a book in my hand. I glanced at my watch. Fuck, and fifteen minutes to get downtown.
I rest my case.
Click to view2. PRON BATTLE AT 51STCENTURYFOX'S HOUSE: SASS ON THE PLASS (I call it arse on the plarse) THEMES: TOYS, TELEPATHY, THE PLASS. OH YEAH BABAY, GO FORTH AND PORNTIFICATE.
3. A while back, I did this meme where I had people give me sections of my fic, and I would like do a DVD commentary them. So I did like three and lost steam, but I found the file in my lj folder, so I thought I would dust it off and shit.
From To Let for lefaym
The box is light and when you shake it, something that seems like cloth fwrrrms around inside, so you undo the string and pull the paper back, opening the small cardboard box that used to hold, according to the writing on its side, disposable pens.
Okay so. OMG I HAVE THINGS TO SAY. 1. I made that word up. I love making words up for sounds. Like I have a word for cardstock on wood, and a word for Ianto tying a tie. I love making up sound words. I am sure there's a technical term for that, and it's not onomatopoeia. I have a word for the sound you get when you squeeze the air out of a closed plastic bag that has a leak. I like these things.
I thought this would be a big moment here, because you would know the box is from Torchwood, but it would be kind of poignant, because in the first story the narrator learns the name of Torchwood from a pen ze finds in the sofa.
The sticker in the corner, the one the factory affixes to the box to show the design on the pen for easy differentiation, reads the very familiar 'Torchwood.'
That fucking clue. Sarah grips your arm a little because you had already told her about Ianto and Torchwood, of seeing Jack in the street. The two of you have already toasted his memory.
And then I add that in for those of you who have forgotten about the pen and need to have it spelled out. No really, that's all that's there for. And also clue you in to the fact that Sarah already knows, and then you don't go "Hey wait, how does Sarah know?" regardless of the fact that if you'd thought about it, you'd realise that ze probably told her, and we'd never have to have this conversation. Okay. Enough about how much I mistrust you.
Still, some part of you thinks that you are wrong.
This is unnecessary paragraph transition that wouldn't be here at all if I was a better writer.
Inside is a small bundle of cloth. You unfold it; the material was obviously once white but looks to have seen some washing, and so it is that eggshell colour that all white t-shirts get eventually. It is soft and worn and has a pair of women's fake tits painted on it. When you hold it up to look at it, a small card flutters out of the folds and into your lap.
You know, when I thought of the titty shirt, I wish I could describe what I thought it would look like, because originally the boobs on the titty shirt in my head always had a string bikini on, and to this day they sort of do, but I never really mentioned that. And they're airbrushed on the shirt, which is how it holds up so well. I like to think that Ianto wears it every now and then to bed for sentimental reasons. And because Jack isn't an idiot, he picks the right thing to send, the right message, so that he can say as little as possible. I was going to have it end his way, right here, but I thought it was only fair that Jack answer the question that ze asked before Jack drove away.
The same delicate old-style cursive has written out the card, some cream-coloured stock that is sturdy and weighty and means something to this whole conversation more than just tree fibres.
'Saving the world,' it says.
That was me trying to wrap it all up like an episode of Doogie Houser. You may notice that you can sense when my stories are ending because I start to wrap things up, like when the pianist starts playing at church and you know the sermon is wrapping up. Man, that was the best thing ever. You were like, "OMG SOON I WILL BE FREE" So yeah. There you go.
***
From When Taken Apart for electro_club
When they handle it, it's just a thing, a piece of something. It is what Jack has been waiting for-not the heart with its system mapped and catalogued, not the intestines, unraveled and slit apart, flattened as if they are going to make sausage.
My mom had just explained about the intestines and what they do to them in autopsy, and I had to put that in there. I was like, "human intestine sausage? No thanks!"
This, the brain, the seat of every joke, every innovative thought, every attempt at rescue or a memo, or a hastily written seduction on a post it note. This lump of gray that they weigh, that one might use to make headcheese in another country were he another creature altogether. This thing made Jack coffee and chided him when he was careless.
Okay, so I'll admit in this fic that I wanted to do several things a) gross you out, b) force the reader to confront the fact that Ianto is dead and c) reduce Ianto to body parts, chunks of meat, possibly for shock factor, but also to divorce the concept of the physical and the extra. The extra, being much more dire and sad if you are Jack and cannot even convince yourself that there's some sort of something after death, blah blah. It's kind of how I feel when people tell me that a dead person is in a better place, because I don't really believe that. And sometimes I want to remind people of the fact that the thoughts you have re: getting coffee and driving poorly or whatever, are all physical neurons firing, and now it's like a hard drive that stays unused and dead, dusty and about to be cannibalized for parts-the data you used to use to run that computer is still all on there, if you didn't wipe it, and when you break it, you can't really get it back. Unless you're Ripley in Alien 3.
I might have also wanted to walk myself through my husband's autopsy, and in that regard the hardest part was the chest skin pulled up over the face to expose the throat.
When they don't replace it, but put it in a special container for biopsy and stuff his head with newspaper, that is when Jack stops the recording, because really he has seen it, the thing he wanted. Ianto's brain and heart laid open and bandied about like a bundle of rump roasts.
I think this is my favorite sentence in the whole thing except for the first sentence, because I love imagery of lambs and slaughter. Really, it contains the horrific image that the brain, the seat of thought is removed whole from the head and they don't even bother to put it back. It's shoved into a case for study (or rather, part of it is sliced off and the rest is shoved somewhere else. In a biohazard bag for disposal, or in the cavity with the rest of the mucked about organs), and your mind is replaced with the classifieds from yesterday's issue of The Sun. It's almost irreverent. Almost desecration in a way, but that's what life is. Also, I like comparing human organs to meat, because it's taboo.
He would have told Jack that that is all there is, really, right before he might have slammed a magazine into his gun or pulled the car unto a U-turn and blown Jack in the passenger seat. That is all we are Jack, he might have said, but he wouldn't have meant it. His eyes would have said that he hadn't meant it.
Then I threw you a bone. I reminded you that that isn't really Ianto anymore, and not to feel so bad. And then I gave you a visual of Ianto doing what fandom likes him to do best: blowing Jack Harkness. Really fandom, I don't hate you, I just don't think much of us and our reliance on repetition as a whole. I'm in that, too. See at the end there I even had Ianto hint that he believed in an afterlife so that if you wanted to think that he was touched by an angel or something you could.
Jack uploads the video to his wrist strap. He watches it once a year for ten years, just to remind himself.
I really do like this, because I think that a) Jack knows that he's responsible for this, so he'll watch it as a punishment, and b) he knows that he'll forget Ianto, so he does this for a while to rather sear on his brain the responsibility issue. Nothing brings that home like watching your lover's autopsy vid.
He'll rediscover it fifteen hundred years later, and he won't know what it means. It's a morbid thing, and he needs the space.
He deletes it.
But just like Ianto is meat in the end, Jack can't hold on to it forever, and the file becomes as pointless as a sliced intestine, a sectioned brain, a portion of heart or liver that when inside the person who is alive, we see as a whole organism, but can be taken apart, depriving the viewer and themselves of the context of their being. The video loses meaningful context without memory, like looking at a bunch of old photos in the attic-you know they must be related to you, but they don't mean anything because you have no context for them.
I have talked too much. Also, I separated that last line for oral impact.
***
From It's Already Tomorrow in Australia (or Win Some, Lose Some, H7, N1) for used_songs
I snapped my book shut. Roxy tucked hers into the inside of her jacket. "Mine start over at Northwest Hospital in less than an hour." I tried to act as if I didn't know when mine started or where, but I'd seen the first two pages, and it wasn't something I wanted to talk about.
The best thing about writing this wad that I got to confront the sheer NUMBERS of a mass plague. I mean, sure, you reap an accident a day, but then the plague strikes and suddenly you can't get there fast enough.
Mason was already gone. It was funny how no one had really discussed what was about to happen. Maybe the plague boys were too hyped. I mean, face it-after being stuck here for a few hundred years, I might have been eager to start punching my ticket onward too. I wondered just how long until I might fade out and go…wherever.
Also, I wanted the plague boys to get a break.
I'd always wondered just what the quota was on reaps. If it was totally arbitrary, were there some people who did like, maybe four reaps and then moved on? Was it tied to karma? If I did weeks of these reaps, would I be promoted? And was it heaven? And who would be there? Would I see the people I'd reaped? And would they hold it against me? Would Betty be there? I hadn't thought about her in months.
These are all questions I asked myself re: the show. I like the idea what it's an arbitrary quota, and there's people who have reaped 560000 people and are still here and some chick from Des Moines became a reaper and moved on after like 12 reaps. That it's random and not linked to ANYTHING.
Also, it's fun to ask questions in fact that you don't intend to answer. I did this a lot when I used to write lit papers, and it worked. My professors would write "hrm, that's a good question!" and "yes!" in the margins of my paper and never really realise that I'd never proved my thesis (I don't like to commit to one answer)
Was this the big one? Was this the end of the world? It was hard not to suddenly go apocalyptic when your reap count for the day was probably three hundred. Then again, had Guy once thought that the bubonic plague was the end of the world?
Once again, I don't plan on answering any of these. LOL also, I do this inner narration to skip physical action. Like while this monologue would be playing on the screen, if you have ever seen the show, you would know that the action doesn't stop. You can fill in what you think is happening. It usually shit you don't need described.
It took me a second to realize that nearly everyone had left, and I was still standing there with a vacant expression and a book in my hand. I glanced at my watch. Fuck, and fifteen minutes to get downtown.
I rest my case.