hogwarts gone wild

Ngk.

This is the first time I've been near a computer in days. I have comments to answer, and fest fics to review, and. Damn you, awkward living situation. Damn you to hell and back.

I'm actually trying to write something right now, and it's not working out. Allow me to explain, in the form of an IM conversation:

( in which i am ridiculous )

I don't even know.

There was fic last night! Bandom fic, even!

- Pictures of Me and You
Frank/Gerard. My Chemical Romance. R, for bad language and shameless rutting on a bus.

Right. Onto my incredibly exciting life:

- Work on my outstanding Harry Potter deadlines continues apace. I've made serious progress on the fic that's the latest -- Lisa! I love you! No, really! -- enough progress that I've mostly abandoned my earlier (if somewhat vague) ideas toward taking a bath with my toaster.

- Work on the My Chemical Romance Tattoo Shop AU of crack and possible fail has not started, sadly. But it will. Oh yes, it will. I can already hear Mikey's opening conversation with Ray, and somewhere in the back of my brain, Gerard is mumbling about needles. Mumbling, seriously. I know, I'm hilariously excited about a fic that I practically swore on a Bible I wasn't going to write, but I'm a big smelly liar like that, and wolfshirts is a disease. Also, wildestranger and jezzabe carry really big cattleprods.

- At work today, I was bitchslapped by a sex pollen fic bunny wherein Mikey all but mauls Frank in a club restroom. It was all hands fisted in shirts and hips pressed against the sink and the way Frank's tattoos were yellowed by the flickering, fluorescent lights, and that was before it devolved into disgustingly filthy porn. Accordingly, Bandom is having a Sex Pollen Meme as we speak. Unaccordingly, I can't play along. I'm way too backed up in the fic department. My deadlines -- Lisa! You're my favourite! Honestly! -- totally own my soul.

- MCR is going to be in Irvine the first week of April, and I am torn. I hate the Verizon Amphitheatre like burning. Of course, I wouldn't actually have to go inside, because it's one of those all-day outdoor ordeals, so I'd mostly be standing around in the parking lot. And I'm not familiar with any of the other bands, so. It's probably safe to assume that MCR is playing last, or near to last, but I wouldn't want to risk it. And I've learned calling the venue for performance times is pointless -- they want you to be there all day, because this raises the chances of you pissing your money away on overpriced beer and crappy food.

- My other option is to drive out to see them in Tempe, Arizona the last week in March. I'm totally crazy like that, and I lived in Tempe once, but. frontbits is flat out refusing to be crazy with me. Apparently, we're too old for pointless sick days from work and day-trips that are six hours one way. I am wholly unimpressed with her adult logic, but I am also wholly unimpressed with the idea of heading for the next state over with nothing but myself for company. The last time I was stuck in a car for a protracted period of time, it resulted in horribly pretentious Harry/Draco songfic to the tune of Nine Inch Nails.

- Regulus Black is still my king.

Oh, Harry Potter.

Harry Potter.

You're demanding and abusive and your sometimes contradictory canon occasionally makes me want to kick puppies in the head, but I love you and I'll never, ever leave you. I may consider it now and again, particularly on cold, windswept nights when the rain is battering at my windows and you've drank away the rent money again and my inability to finish a story has left me feeling tired and undesirable, but I'll never actually do it. I tried that one time, I really did, but I made it as far as the corner liquor store before realising that you really do love me, almost as much as I love you, even if you have an awfully funny way of showing it.

I'm sorry about the terrible things I said the other night. I was angry. I didn't mean it. How about I make lunch while only wearing knickers? After we eat, we can watch The Breakfast Club and cuddle on the couch.

*

Here. Have some recs of the Bandom persuasion:

Everyday Mysteries in the Summertime is one of the first Bandom fics I read. It's also one of the first AU's I read -- it is, in fact, the AU that made me realise I should give the whole Bandom AU genre a fair shot. It's a Mikey/Pete wherein Gerard and Mikey work at a gas station, and its full of wonderful things like Frank and heat and ordinary tedium, and I loved it. Loved. When I finished it, the only thing I wanted -- other than to have written it myself -- was for there to me more of it to read.

Yes, well. wax_jism is an evil genius. The other morning I woke up Nightswimming, a deliciously hot and deliciously long Frank/Gerard sequel. This involves rain and ordinary tedium, and Gerard drinking too much and Frank trying to navigate around his mother's boyfriend, and it is simply spectacular.

Then:

A day or so later, jjtaylor wrote Buy Handmade. This is another AU, a Frank/Gerard wherein Frank and Mikey work as IT consultants and Gerard is, essentially, Gerard, but also there is Bob and Ray and fresh-baked bread.

This. Wow. The only thing I can say about this is that it's flawless. The sex is hot like burning, and the slow, delicious build-up is even hotter. This fic also slapped me up the side of the head, to the point that I had to go sit on the couch and veg for awhile. Frank spends the opening run nursing a resentful dissatisfaction about his job, and it's the same, exact resentful dissatisfaction I've had about -- well, all my jobs. And, for the exact same reasons: Frank realises he wants make things. He wants to work with his hands. He wants to create, and yeah, I realised that about myself a long time ago. I'd just never thought about it like that -- like, coherently -- and it was a little startling and awesome to see it all laid out in print. I hate my current job less that I've hated the others because at the end of the day I am working with my hands to some degree, but there's no real creativity behind it. When all is said and done, I'm dishing out espresso and milk to faceless people who, for the most part, don't care who's making their drink, as long as it gets made.

Look. Someone needs to keep me away from wolfshirts, ok?

Because, the crack. The crack. It is strong with these people, and I have no defence against it. None. If I keep nosing around there, I will eventually snap and write something utterly loltastic. Like the one where the My Chem boys open a tattoo shop, and Frank is constantly jumping off the counters and knocking shit over, and Bob has, like, piercing superpowers, and Ray noodles on his guitar when business is slow, and Mikey can convince the nervous, fence-sitting types to get the tattoo that's totally perfect for them with his mind. And Gerard's there too -- he does all the artwork, but he never leaves the loft upstairs because omg needles, so the customers think he's a figment everyone's imagination. Or an extremely talented ghost.

Failing that, there's always the multiband AU where they all work at Denny's and Spencer Smith is the snottiest waiter ever.

( cut for the xylodemon shopping experience )

Apropos of nothing: my computer fails at life.

Well. The best I can about today is: at least it's halfway over.

I'm having soy yoghurt for lunch, and it tastes -- well, not so great. I'm trying to decide if this is because it's a) soy yoghurt, b) banana flavoured, which I didn't much care for when I still ate dairy yoghurt, c) two days past it's sell-by date, or d) all of the above.

In other news, an idle xylodemon is a ridiculous xylodemon. I just sent a terribly late fest fic to beta, and what have I been doing while I wait, instead of something useful -- say, cleaning my house or doing laundry? Yeah, I've just been pootling around the internet. Shockingly, this resulted in me reading a metric fuckton of fanfic, from both HP and Bandom. And because I have no sense of continuity, I've been reading from both fandoms back to back.

Which got me to thinking about my reading habits in both fandoms. Turns out, they're quite different in one regard.

As far as HP is concerned, AUs have never been my thing. I've read and enjoyed some of the milder sort -- say, where a single canon event was changed -- and I tend to give Bring Back Black fics a free pass, but I just can't get into the bigger, more epic sort. I'm a total whore for the HP canon settings and, to a lesser degree, the HP canon timeline. I know plenty of people like AUs, and I know some authors write them very well, but I 'm just not interested in the one where Remus and Sirius are working on a dude ranch, or Harry and Draco are fire-fighters in Los Angeles.

Oddly enough, this is in direct conflict with my Bandom tastes. Don't get me wrong: I love canon Bandom fics -- where the bands are on tour, or recording an album, or pottering around the same apartment/house/hotel on their downtime, but. I've quickly become a huge fan of the Bandom AU. Recently, I cannot get enough of the fics where they are all attending private school, or living in the same apartment complex, or going to film school, or working at the bookstore Jon Walker inherited from his grandmother. Also the one where Pete 'babysits' a slightly underage Patrick.

Huh.

Also, jezzabe is a vile enabler. I spammed her the other day with this picture of Gabe Saporta grinding on Mikey Way like it's his job, and jezzabe now wants me to write fic wherein Mikey acquiesced to Gabe's barbaric behaviour because of Gabe's smirk. And because Gabe promised threatened to show Mikey his basement.

*eyes HP to-do list*

*cries*