while they did live happily ever after

/shamelessly steals bluestalking's subject line

I'm doing Audrey's and Beth's, so I'll post my questions at the end of the Beth post, which won't be until next time. But man I haven't done something non-work-or-relationship related in FOREVER, so, here you go!

(I miss reading and fandom and writing and my boyfriend and ONE MORE WEEK oh God I have to finish writing the midterm.)

( MEME MEME MEME MEME )

OKAY OKAY behind this cut (for those with slow internets) is the song "The Ballad of Love and Hate" by The Avett Brothers, whose voices are so so soothing and who do lovely things with guitars. Only one of them sings this song, but I just...love it.
( Love writes a letter and sends it to Hate. )

I would share.











best video ever or best video ever

so mostly I just enjoyed this song for its ridiculous straightforwardness, but after watching the music video



I kind of love it in a shipper way! Like, it's not like he's going around and just being a jerk, but the music video is so equal-opportunity, and she's singing along too, and they're both having fun, and they're still together in the end! it is like the whole OH NO I'M A TOTAL PLAYER BUT LO I HAVE BEEN DRAGGED INTO MONOGAMY KICKING AND SCREAMING ALL THE WAY thing, only on both sides.












p.s. now this song is stuck in your head for the rest of the day, YOU'RE WELCOME.

okay actually just last week I was going all, "man this song is dumb, he's never coming back," and I hadn't really listened to the lyrics, and now tonight I am...well okay it's still not my favorite song, BUT IT MADE INGRID MICHAELSON REALLY HAPPY TO HEAR US SING IT, SO I GUESS THAT'S ALL RIGHT.

anyway Sunday Lovie was like, "aw man, tickets to Ingrid Michaelson, I should buy some! BUT WHO WILL COME WITH ME" and I, being a loyal music-loving roommate, said, "OF COURSE I WILL" thinking that the concert was on November Something.

So last night I was all ONOEZ BIG AUDITION (which turned out to be ohai, you can sing Messiah? Awesome here's your folder we'll get you a robe on Sunday, yay), and then I got home and was like PHEW, man I have Alistair fic to write, I can do that tomorrow night, right? Right?

Me: So, we don't have anything tomorrow night, do we?
Lovie: Um...the concert?
Me: ...it's on a Thursday night?
Lovie: ...
Me: ...OH WHY NOT.

( getting there )

( opening act )

anyway now that's all written down so I can wash off my arm yay.

( this section does not do justice to the amazing that is Ingrid Michaelson live )

there was some sort of scary accident right outside afterwards, but we are okay. We also walked through sketchy Seattle to get to a bus stop (I swear this is the emptiest big downtown I've ever walked through at night), and we are okay. YOU CAN KNOW THAT WE WILL BE OKAY.

omg this concert managed to make me forget, like, this entire week. I am SO GLAD we went.

:-D

i live! and lovie lives with me! these are all excellent things. like my job! but i will say nothing further about that for now. for now i just have links[ys].

1) can anyone give me the name of a good Napoleon biography? I feel like if I am going to be an obsessive coup-de-foudre fangirl of his I can at least know aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the stories behind the heartache described in these kate beaton comics.

2) is it sad to say this changed my life? perhaps not changed, but threw it into startlingly beautiful perspective, if only for a moment. And I was content.

( excerpt, and mutterings )

3) Speaking of going back four-or-five years, someone on Facebook mentioned that Folk Choir is going to sing Biebl's Ave Maria, to which I scoffed a tiny bit because Folk Choir is good and all but this is not their kind of song, and also because freshman year of college I went to a ND-and-Michigan-Glee-Clubs concert, from which I discovered Guster due to the Michigan's-version-of-the-Undertones's cover of Mona Lisa (the only track I still have from the sadly lost CD). Anyway, they had the boys onstage and also in the balcony behind the stage, and the chant solo in the middle was sung from up there, and it was just--

( better described by freshman!Jade )

4) Speaking of college, or things I learned in college, or rather a lot of conversations I have been having recently about women in college and the like, or perhaps just feminism: Maureen Johnson on the whole "boys aren't reading!/don't have anything to read!" outcry (or, how a penis makes what you write suddenly interesting to the populace at large).

5) New Glee! WHY IS MY FLIST NOT DISCUSSING THIS MORE. Please do not tell me I got into Glee just in time for everyone else to be bored and ditch it, because so much happened, and it was all pretty cool! *sob*

♥


EXTRA BONUS LIMITED-TIME-ONLY LINK: romanitas graciously agreed to un-flock this hilarious, almost Growing-Up-Cullen-esque Merlin...joke...parody...hilarious thing that she and her friend did. READ IT BEFORE SHE FLOCKS IT AGAIN.

1) I read Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex, and I don't have nearly as much to say about it as I did about The Time Paradox. This is not to say I didn't enjoy it; I laughed at least once a page, because Colfer was playing fast and loose with hilarious dialogue and hilarious side characters and even point of view--often he would describe something with a particularly nice turn of phrase, and in the next line have the current POV character think something along the lines of if I'm saying things like that, I must be suffering from oxygen deprivation. The writing and the plot were much, much tighter than TP, like you could really feel his growth as a writer and the editor's steady hand working upon the novel.

That being said, it was almost too short; it felt, like A Conspiracy of Kings, as if we were being handed an incident full of important information that would unfold in the denouement, packaged within an entertaining adventure, letting us spend time with all of our favorite characters but really just setting the pieces for some grander showdown in the future. (Hint: All the even-numbered books in the series have involved Opal Koboi, and the next, allegedly final, book is going to be number 8, if you can imagine it.) I loved seeing Holly and JULIET yay Juliet and Butler and Mulch and Foaly (out of his element!) and Artemis again, and they were all wonderful, and at the end of the book I wanted--more. There were so many little things that still needed exploring--not that the book doesn't tie together, but rather that things are changing and we're stopped before everything really starts rushing to a head.

I do take issue with the fact that Artemis is allegedly celebrating his fifteenth birthday at the beginning of the story, because he was fifteen back in The Lost Colony. Of course, my dad pointed out to me that the target audience of this series is probably still 12-14-year-old boys, despite the fact that the series is ten years old and those of us who were twelve when we started reading are now twenty-two and still shipping Holly/Artemis like burning. And the series has grown up, too, though perhaps not as noticeably as say Harry Potter; the central themes in The Time Paradox were certainly older, perhaps in some ways too old for a fourteen-year-old to grasp; it's one thing to read about a character reflecting on personal change and growth and the choices you make to get there, and quite another to really have a grasp on how that's happened in your life. And the humor has gotten a bit more complex too (see: I-see-what-you-did-with-that-POV), even if Mulch is still around for the fart jokes.

Anyway, it was a fantastic little yarn, but mostly I am just impatient for the next one.

( SPOILERS )



2) I rewatched Music and Lyrics the other night, the cute little rom-com with Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant that Malone and I started watching at home one night, got about thirty seconds into the music video, and stopped and waited until Mom was around to watch it with us. The whole theme of creation and music isn't as deep as the theme of creation and writing is in Stranger Than Fiction--this is a rom -com, after all--but what impressed me this time around was Hugh Grant's acting job. He is very...adult, in this film--he knows where he is in his life and he's comfortable with who he is and what he's doing, and I especially liked that he is a musician, and he shows it--in quiet little ways, like the way he sits down at the piano in his apartment or in the store, like it's something he's infinitely familiar with. And even though he's "just" a pop music star, he writes his own stuff--he knows how music works, knows how to put it together, and it's all just...there. I just...really liked his character, and thought he did an understatedly phenomenal job of playing it.



3) I started rewatching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon last night but stopped right before the final battle because I was pretty sure I wouldn't make it through without sobbing and because I needed to go to bed (woe, the adult schedule).

( musing on the movie )



4) I have started reading The Demon's Lexicon because the library had it (and the sequel), but I am apparently Not In the Mood. Partially because I am reading a book called The Wall of Fame and it contains some truly atrocious metaphors that ought to be taken behind the publishing house and shot repeatedly, and partially because I have trouble getting into "tough" characters like Nick, and mostly because reading about Nick and Alan makes me think about Felix and Mildmay and, well, Felix and Mildmay are a really, REALLY hard fictional brotherly relationship to beat. Like, nigh-impossible. Especially after Corambis and their exchange of brotherly affection. (FELIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIX MILDMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY I JUST WANT YOU BOTH TO BE HAPPY FOREVER AND I FEEL LIKE IT IS OBTAINABLE AND THIS JUST OVERWHELMS ME WITH RELIEF, I LOVE YOU BOTH SO HARD.)

(yes, Jade just said she loved Felix. It--sometimes these things happen.)

( gems from aforementioned Atrocious Metaphor Book )




5) To end on a positive note: I made myself dinner and ate it and now am full of food! My fish is still alive! (His name is Ron, for those interested. My first dog was named Fred, and then one of my sisters got a gerbil and named it George, and our first betta fish was named Percy, and I think another gerbil was named Charlie, so...he is red and beautiful and I will post pictures.) My apartment is an utter mess! Ingrid Michaelson writes beautiful songs! Quark drew the picture that was in my head because she is awesome! crisium_rising writes THE MOST AMAZING Dragon Age fanfic ever! The libraries here have BOTH Virtu and Mirador (I literally gasped when I turned the corner and saw them both in their hardbacked glory on their shelf) AND they have lots of sartorias's novels (I brought home A Posse of Princesses and am.very excited about reading it! My books fit on the bookshelf! My apartment door locks! There are trees and mountains around!

Life is good. :-)

anyone else see it? thoughts?






also: Summer's theme is the first three/four notes of "Moon River." Was this on purpose, yes/no.

I, uh, finished posting Falling Slowly, my other not-quite-as-long Neverwinter Nights 2 fanfic. It's from a side character's POV, and he knows about as much about what's going on as, say, someone who hadn't played the game and only glanced at the Wikipedia pages. And, um, I'm really hesitant to say I'M RIDICULOUSLY PROUD OF THIS FIC, but um, I am ridiculously proud of this fic. It is--I think--good. And dedicated to Quark, because she is awesome and deserves it. So, um, you can read it in its entirety now, if you like.

( on the writing process )

The title comes from this song, because I listened to the soundtrack incessantly while writing the fic:
( take this sinking boat and point it home )


and also because the main female character is from a town called West Harbor, so that's a nice little metaphorical connection there, which connects with this song, which also influenced me:
( the light in me will guide you home )

that's not the version of "Harbor" that I have on my computer--mine comes from the "Heard it on NPR" radio, and is just Vienna Teng and a piano, and I still vividly remember the first time I listened to it, in the car on the way home from ND with my dad. It was also the first time I heard Vienna Teng's voice, with its crystalline clarity--it's just so pure, and the road was dark and the sound wrapped around me like a blanket. This fic is kind of like all those late nights sitting on the couch just like I am now, my fingers on the keyboard and the music and the dog sleeping at my feet and a story that I wanted to tell.

so, here's to finding something new for this summer, and many summers to come.

right now I should be editing Nietzsche but uh I am not, oh well.

also I have this song stuck in my head, which is odd, because I'm not a big fan of them, but oh well, I guess for the past couple of days I have been giving you a look at the inside of my brain? When it comes to music? Sort of? I guess I could start highlighting the lyrics that stick in my head. In this one it's like the last sixty seconds of the song, or just the repetitive chorus part, ANYWAY the point is, I just...feel like spreading the news.











all right all ready we'll all float on all right all ready we'll all float on