I am kind of an Old Person.
1. I have managed to Do Something Painful to my shoulder; it hurts if I turn my head too far towards it or try to turn around. I'm not sure how I did that, but I think it might have something to do with me being a stupid bint who tried doing advanced yoga poses four months after having back surgery. I do hope it clears up on its own so I don't have to explain to my orthopedist that I was doing stuff I wasn't supposed to.
Except the other possibility for how I hurt it is that I cracked my neck the wrong way (like cracking your knuckles but with more troubling noises) and I'm not supposed to be doing that either.
Having all these back issues always makes me feel so old, even if logically I know that lots of people have had surgery at my age or younger. Not to mention I feel awfully lazy when I actually have to sit down because my back hurts.
(For folks new to this journal: I have scoliosis, and had surgery last summer to get instrumentation installed that would help correct my curvature. After that operation one of the bolts holding said instrumentation in place slipped a bit, enough to protrude from my back a bit, and this July I had it removed. And thus I am really supposed to be a bit more careful about what I do with my back since it really hasn't been that long, but I feel pretty great so I forget what I'm not supposed to do.)
2. I haven't been going on DA much lately because I havenothing to post and looking at my huge backlog of messages and posted art is intimidating and scary, but I found this on deviantartsnark and it just encapsulated a lot of the things that have annoyed me about DA (aside from the most recent mod failure on the subject of trans* users, which is a whole other thing).
Not the trolling itself, that's pretty typical business, but the comment on the DD selection, about how the photo shows "a beautiful model", with her pregnancy as "a not unattractive afterthought". And I don't know why that wound me up so much, but that seems like it's missing the point of the photo - it's a maternity portrait, the whole idea of it is that the model's pregnancy isn't an afterthought - it's an important part of the portrait, particularly with the nesting-bird motif. And that's all ignored by the featurer, because who cares about any of that so long as the model's beautiful and the portrait's attractive. I mean, that's what's important, right?
It's just reflective of the way photography and portraiture of women is percieved on DA, which has irritated me for a long time - female nudes in obviously erotic poses, or nudes that focus very much on the breasts or legs or other typically-attractive features, are frequently praised and lauded, whereas male nudes have so many unwritten rules they have to skirt to avoid being banned as pornographic, and when they are featured the featurer is always very careful to talk about how it's not an erotic portrait, it's just showing a beautiful body, there's nothing even potentially gay about this omg can you imagine a man being subjected to a gaze how horrible. Most of the models in portrait photography are very conventionally attractive and designed to show it off. And about 90% of the fetish photography is femsub, which there's nothing wrong with, obviously, but the fact that there are so few examples of anything else becomes uncomfortable. I don't know, it's just a collection of things that irritate me about the site and I felt like ranting about them. Feh.
3. So I have not been writing for the past while, given that my computer is broke, but I have been tossing ideas about and trying to figure out what I want to do in some of these Big Huge Crazy AUs I want to write. Mostly I've been thinking about that postwar AU and how I can make it make sense. Which isn't easy, let me tell you.
So I really want to work Sari being connected to Primus/the Allspark as a part of the plot somehow, because otherwise I have nothing to do with her plot-wise and that means I have to kill her off and I refuse to kill off an eight-year-old girl even if she's really sixteen. And the way that makes the most sense to me is to involve the Reformatting of Cybertron that takes place at the end of Beast Machines. Sari is a techno-organic being with a connection to the Allspark via the Key; according to Beast Machines finale, Cybertron is supposed to be a techno-organic planet, and presumably the Allspark is somehow part of or connected to Primus/the planet itself given how it seems to die in the Bayverse continuity when the Allspark got jettisoned into space.
Of course, I'm not sure how to incorporate the Reformatting. Originally I was going to incorporate this other odd idea I had about Blackarachnia going back in time at the end of "Predacons Rising" and causing the Animated-verse Beast Wars, culminating in the Reformatting several million years before the events of the Animated show itself ever actually took place. The robots who lived on Cybertron after that sort of...forgot about the organic nature of the planet and paved it over, including extracting the Allspark instead of leaving it where it was supposed to be, and the planet required Sari to reactivate its organic components and thus ready itself to drive off Unicron. But I'm not sure that actually makes sense. For starters, I wanted Blackarachnia to be present in the story so she could free Optimus, but also, I have no idea how the idea of the Reformatting even works with the idea of Primus as a creator-god. If it's supposed to be techno-organic, why isn't it in other series? If it's reformatted in Beast Machines (and thus in one extension of the G1 timeline), is it thus reformatted in other timelines/universes, given that Primus is a universal constant? After all, Beast Machines takes place in the future of G1; presumably it takes place in the far future of the Animated, Bayverse, Unicron Trilogy etc universes. Or does it perhaps need to be individually reformatted in all universal streams for it to "take"? What happens if Cybertron is reformatted before the reformatting takes place in Beast Machines? REFORMATTING DOESN'T EVEN LOOK LIKE A WORD ANYMORE AUGH.
Well, even if I use the Blackarachnia-in-Beast Machines bit (which I might use as a ficlet if I don't use in the Postwar AU), I do have another way for Optimus to get out of Megatron's fortress - I can have Lockdown go get him. Even if Bulkhead doesn't have any way to pay him, he's kind of out of a job and might just be bored enough to go and retrieve Optimus for the challenge of it. Now, the trouble is, I've already got him fostering discontent in the Decepticon ranks for the same reason (so the Cons will start hiring him to capture each other and give him something to do), but I don't want him to come across as too much ofa good guy. So once he does capture Optimus, since Optimus has nothing left on him for him to take as a trophy, Lockdown decides he's going to keep Optimus himself around as the prize - bragging rights for having stolen him from Megatron's own fortress, essentially. And if he's already got Optimus there, he might as well make use of him in his plan for fomenting discord among his customers. And I don't really know where it goes from there.
So...yeah, I'm thinking it's probably a better idea to just work on that one where Bumblebee takes the form of an iPod, at least that one has sort of a plot and doesn't require miles of fanwank.
It is so damn late why aren't I in bed. D: D: Good night, flist.
Except the other possibility for how I hurt it is that I cracked my neck the wrong way (like cracking your knuckles but with more troubling noises) and I'm not supposed to be doing that either.
Having all these back issues always makes me feel so old, even if logically I know that lots of people have had surgery at my age or younger. Not to mention I feel awfully lazy when I actually have to sit down because my back hurts.
(For folks new to this journal: I have scoliosis, and had surgery last summer to get instrumentation installed that would help correct my curvature. After that operation one of the bolts holding said instrumentation in place slipped a bit, enough to protrude from my back a bit, and this July I had it removed. And thus I am really supposed to be a bit more careful about what I do with my back since it really hasn't been that long, but I feel pretty great so I forget what I'm not supposed to do.)
2. I haven't been going on DA much lately because I havenothing to post and looking at my huge backlog of messages and posted art is intimidating and scary, but I found this on deviantartsnark and it just encapsulated a lot of the things that have annoyed me about DA (aside from the most recent mod failure on the subject of trans* users, which is a whole other thing).
Not the trolling itself, that's pretty typical business, but the comment on the DD selection, about how the photo shows "a beautiful model", with her pregnancy as "a not unattractive afterthought". And I don't know why that wound me up so much, but that seems like it's missing the point of the photo - it's a maternity portrait, the whole idea of it is that the model's pregnancy isn't an afterthought - it's an important part of the portrait, particularly with the nesting-bird motif. And that's all ignored by the featurer, because who cares about any of that so long as the model's beautiful and the portrait's attractive. I mean, that's what's important, right?
It's just reflective of the way photography and portraiture of women is percieved on DA, which has irritated me for a long time - female nudes in obviously erotic poses, or nudes that focus very much on the breasts or legs or other typically-attractive features, are frequently praised and lauded, whereas male nudes have so many unwritten rules they have to skirt to avoid being banned as pornographic, and when they are featured the featurer is always very careful to talk about how it's not an erotic portrait, it's just showing a beautiful body, there's nothing even potentially gay about this omg can you imagine a man being subjected to a gaze how horrible. Most of the models in portrait photography are very conventionally attractive and designed to show it off. And about 90% of the fetish photography is femsub, which there's nothing wrong with, obviously, but the fact that there are so few examples of anything else becomes uncomfortable. I don't know, it's just a collection of things that irritate me about the site and I felt like ranting about them. Feh.
3. So I have not been writing for the past while, given that my computer is broke, but I have been tossing ideas about and trying to figure out what I want to do in some of these Big Huge Crazy AUs I want to write. Mostly I've been thinking about that postwar AU and how I can make it make sense. Which isn't easy, let me tell you.
So I really want to work Sari being connected to Primus/the Allspark as a part of the plot somehow, because otherwise I have nothing to do with her plot-wise and that means I have to kill her off and I refuse to kill off an eight-year-old girl even if she's really sixteen. And the way that makes the most sense to me is to involve the Reformatting of Cybertron that takes place at the end of Beast Machines. Sari is a techno-organic being with a connection to the Allspark via the Key; according to Beast Machines finale, Cybertron is supposed to be a techno-organic planet, and presumably the Allspark is somehow part of or connected to Primus/the planet itself given how it seems to die in the Bayverse continuity when the Allspark got jettisoned into space.
Of course, I'm not sure how to incorporate the Reformatting. Originally I was going to incorporate this other odd idea I had about Blackarachnia going back in time at the end of "Predacons Rising" and causing the Animated-verse Beast Wars, culminating in the Reformatting several million years before the events of the Animated show itself ever actually took place. The robots who lived on Cybertron after that sort of...forgot about the organic nature of the planet and paved it over, including extracting the Allspark instead of leaving it where it was supposed to be, and the planet required Sari to reactivate its organic components and thus ready itself to drive off Unicron. But I'm not sure that actually makes sense. For starters, I wanted Blackarachnia to be present in the story so she could free Optimus, but also, I have no idea how the idea of the Reformatting even works with the idea of Primus as a creator-god. If it's supposed to be techno-organic, why isn't it in other series? If it's reformatted in Beast Machines (and thus in one extension of the G1 timeline), is it thus reformatted in other timelines/universes, given that Primus is a universal constant? After all, Beast Machines takes place in the future of G1; presumably it takes place in the far future of the Animated, Bayverse, Unicron Trilogy etc universes. Or does it perhaps need to be individually reformatted in all universal streams for it to "take"? What happens if Cybertron is reformatted before the reformatting takes place in Beast Machines? REFORMATTING DOESN'T EVEN LOOK LIKE A WORD ANYMORE AUGH.
Well, even if I use the Blackarachnia-in-Beast Machines bit (which I might use as a ficlet if I don't use in the Postwar AU), I do have another way for Optimus to get out of Megatron's fortress - I can have Lockdown go get him. Even if Bulkhead doesn't have any way to pay him, he's kind of out of a job and might just be bored enough to go and retrieve Optimus for the challenge of it. Now, the trouble is, I've already got him fostering discontent in the Decepticon ranks for the same reason (so the Cons will start hiring him to capture each other and give him something to do), but I don't want him to come across as too much ofa good guy. So once he does capture Optimus, since Optimus has nothing left on him for him to take as a trophy, Lockdown decides he's going to keep Optimus himself around as the prize - bragging rights for having stolen him from Megatron's own fortress, essentially. And if he's already got Optimus there, he might as well make use of him in his plan for fomenting discord among his customers. And I don't really know where it goes from there.
So...yeah, I'm thinking it's probably a better idea to just work on that one where Bumblebee takes the form of an iPod, at least that one has sort of a plot and doesn't require miles of fanwank.
It is so damn late why aren't I in bed. D: D: Good night, flist.