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Mar. 10th, 2016
WIP meme: choicebullet, startle!
Mar. 10th, 2016 04:54 amvia http://ift.tt/1M83ZAj:
This is from the unfinished unpublished sequel to Dumb Questions, actually. Which is in that continuity and I always forget about it. I’m giving you a long excerpt because I forgot I had so much of this one done. The premise was that in Dumb Questions, Bucky speculates to Steve that Tony watches them fuck on surveillance, and Tony, eavesdropping via surveillance, gets offended because he has boundaries, you know. Pepper is amused, then suggests they take Bucky up on what amounted to an offer. Tony refuses, but–
“Gosh, Tony,” Pepper said, and Tony startled, dropping the busted relay on the floor with a tink. “I didn’t think you’d go for it.”
“Hey, Ms. Potts,” Barnes said easily, though he looked perplexed. He and Tony exchanged glances and Tony watched him realize, just as he himself did, how very, very close they were standing together, how very close their faces were to one another, how it kind of looked like they were on the verge of making out. Barnes’s expression went comically dismayed. “Oh jeez. He’s just fixin’ my arm, Ms. Potts, I ain’t tryin’ to steal your, uh, your boyfriend.”
“Ah,” Pepper said.
Tony forced his brain back on track and made himself pick up the new relay. “I guess if I was tryin’ to steal him I’d probably be more creative about it,” Barnes mused, and Tony made himself not meet the man’s eyes because Christ, he was right there, and he smelled of the same deodorant Steve used, and a hint of cigarette smoke and sunshine and the distinctive scent laundry detergent got when it was heated up by a body.
“No,” Pepper said, “Tony likes to be the most creative one in a relationship, he’d probably pretty much just go for what you’re doing now.”
WIP Guessing Game meme! Ask me for a word!
This is from the unfinished unpublished sequel to Dumb Questions, actually. Which is in that continuity and I always forget about it. I’m giving you a long excerpt because I forgot I had so much of this one done. The premise was that in Dumb Questions, Bucky speculates to Steve that Tony watches them fuck on surveillance, and Tony, eavesdropping via surveillance, gets offended because he has boundaries, you know. Pepper is amused, then suggests they take Bucky up on what amounted to an offer. Tony refuses, but–
“Gosh, Tony,” Pepper said, and Tony startled, dropping the busted relay on the floor with a tink. “I didn’t think you’d go for it.”
“Hey, Ms. Potts,” Barnes said easily, though he looked perplexed. He and Tony exchanged glances and Tony watched him realize, just as he himself did, how very, very close they were standing together, how very close their faces were to one another, how it kind of looked like they were on the verge of making out. Barnes’s expression went comically dismayed. “Oh jeez. He’s just fixin’ my arm, Ms. Potts, I ain’t tryin’ to steal your, uh, your boyfriend.”
“Ah,” Pepper said.
Tony forced his brain back on track and made himself pick up the new relay. “I guess if I was tryin’ to steal him I’d probably be more creative about it,” Barnes mused, and Tony made himself not meet the man’s eyes because Christ, he was right there, and he smelled of the same deodorant Steve used, and a hint of cigarette smoke and sunshine and the distinctive scent laundry detergent got when it was heated up by a body.
“No,” Pepper said, “Tony likes to be the most creative one in a relationship, he’d probably pretty much just go for what you’re doing now.”
WIP Guessing Game meme! Ask me for a word!
via http://ift.tt/1nzcK05:
More on the music thing. I know, I should’ve waited until I posted the story maybe, so y’all could actually kind of follow along. Maybe I’ll get these up and then come back to ‘em after the thing’s up. Or maybe I’ll link from within the story itself. It’s hard to conceptualize, but here’s the thing to keep in mind as I do all this flailing: I’m so much better-organized and -disciplined on everything I’ve done for this book, that it’s leaving in the dust any other combination of things I’ve ever done. So. Enough foreword, on to this video.
The easy parallels break down here a little, and I can’t get quite into why Townes Van Zandt’s story is so resonant, but if you catch at the beginning of this video, he says, “I wrote this story about two Mexican bandits that I saw on the TV… two weeks after I wrote this song.” I feel the same way here, kinda; there are more parallels here with a character than I’d realized. I’ve loved this song for a decade now, and never looked into it much before starting this story. I was making a deliberate attempt to learn all the lyrics to sing to my insomniac toddler niece, and so– anyway.
There’s a lot going on. And the role this song is filling, well– there are repeated references to The Ballad of Han Solo, and I initially thought this would be a good model for it. On reflection, no, not at all; Solo is a popular figure and his legend overall would not at all reflect the bittersweetness of his actual life. He’d be The Ballad of Jesse James instead, which I had totally forgotten I learned in elementary school and know every word of without ever having examined the politics of it. (There must be politics, why would I learn a song about an 1870s bandit alongside God Bless America and America The Beautiful???)
So, this is not the Ballad of Han Solo, or anything like it. This song doesn’t appear in-text. But there is a song like this, and Poe sings it, but rarely. There’s a brain-damaged old smuggler on Yavin 4, who gave guitar lessons on the side, and taught Poe all the foundations of playing when he was a kid, and the community center’s music program director put up with his disreputableness because brain damage or no he was a sweet harmless man, and Poe has a deep inward terror that someday he’ll wind up damaged like that man. (Which ties in, somewhat, to his elsewhere remarked-upon apparent life ambition being to Die For Leia Organa, because he sort of seems to think those are his two options– die in glory or languish in obscurity. Fucked-up, and he knows that, but it’s not really in anyone’s interests to dissuade him from dying in glory when that’s pretty much what the Resistance actually needs from him.)
That man, the guitar teacher, is basically Lefty, only his long-term memory is shot to hell and his stories are an incomprehensible mixture of fact, fiction, and fantasy. And his songs are more melancholy than a child could really understand, but now that he’s an adult, Poe is sometimes creeped out by how perfect those songs really are.
More on the music thing. I know, I should’ve waited until I posted the story maybe, so y’all could actually kind of follow along. Maybe I’ll get these up and then come back to ‘em after the thing’s up. Or maybe I’ll link from within the story itself. It’s hard to conceptualize, but here’s the thing to keep in mind as I do all this flailing: I’m so much better-organized and -disciplined on everything I’ve done for this book, that it’s leaving in the dust any other combination of things I’ve ever done. So. Enough foreword, on to this video.
The easy parallels break down here a little, and I can’t get quite into why Townes Van Zandt’s story is so resonant, but if you catch at the beginning of this video, he says, “I wrote this story about two Mexican bandits that I saw on the TV… two weeks after I wrote this song.” I feel the same way here, kinda; there are more parallels here with a character than I’d realized. I’ve loved this song for a decade now, and never looked into it much before starting this story. I was making a deliberate attempt to learn all the lyrics to sing to my insomniac toddler niece, and so– anyway.
There’s a lot going on. And the role this song is filling, well– there are repeated references to The Ballad of Han Solo, and I initially thought this would be a good model for it. On reflection, no, not at all; Solo is a popular figure and his legend overall would not at all reflect the bittersweetness of his actual life. He’d be The Ballad of Jesse James instead, which I had totally forgotten I learned in elementary school and know every word of without ever having examined the politics of it. (There must be politics, why would I learn a song about an 1870s bandit alongside God Bless America and America The Beautiful???)
So, this is not the Ballad of Han Solo, or anything like it. This song doesn’t appear in-text. But there is a song like this, and Poe sings it, but rarely. There’s a brain-damaged old smuggler on Yavin 4, who gave guitar lessons on the side, and taught Poe all the foundations of playing when he was a kid, and the community center’s music program director put up with his disreputableness because brain damage or no he was a sweet harmless man, and Poe has a deep inward terror that someday he’ll wind up damaged like that man. (Which ties in, somewhat, to his elsewhere remarked-upon apparent life ambition being to Die For Leia Organa, because he sort of seems to think those are his two options– die in glory or languish in obscurity. Fucked-up, and he knows that, but it’s not really in anyone’s interests to dissuade him from dying in glory when that’s pretty much what the Resistance actually needs from him.)
That man, the guitar teacher, is basically Lefty, only his long-term memory is shot to hell and his stories are an incomprehensible mixture of fact, fiction, and fantasy. And his songs are more melancholy than a child could really understand, but now that he’s an adult, Poe is sometimes creeped out by how perfect those songs really are.
via http://ift.tt/1Tw4Um0:
bomberqueen17:
You asked me a question, then walked away so you couldn’t hear my answer, then came back and asked the same question again, and when this time I yelled my answer told me not to get snippy.
Well if you had the manners of at least a goat, I’d observe social niceties too, but since you don’t, I’ll get as snippy as I damn well please.
UGH.
I still don’t know when she’s leaving but I know when she’s leaving, and that is getting me through today.
bomberqueen17:
You asked me a question, then walked away so you couldn’t hear my answer, then came back and asked the same question again, and when this time I yelled my answer told me not to get snippy.
Well if you had the manners of at least a goat, I’d observe social niceties too, but since you don’t, I’ll get as snippy as I damn well please.
UGH.
I still don’t know when she’s leaving but I know when she’s leaving, and that is getting me through today.
via http://ift.tt/1pzHShD:
Tmi: I have discovered the Worst Thing, and it is when your body simultaneously is trying to have epic Period Shits and is also epically doing The Opposite for unknown unrelated reasons and basically I would like to transcend this physical form if at all possible please and thank you.
Tmi: I have discovered the Worst Thing, and it is when your body simultaneously is trying to have epic Period Shits and is also epically doing The Opposite for unknown unrelated reasons and basically I would like to transcend this physical form if at all possible please and thank you.
via http://ift.tt/1SDD7Pp:
(con’t music series from novel etc)
OK. So. Typed then deleted thousand-word rant on my own experience singing folk music. We’re not here about that. (Ask me sometime about the bartender and I trolling the St. Pat’s crowds with an incredibly over-the-top rendition of Danny Boy that actually made some people cry, and I kept a straight face and I know both verses, okay, I know my Tin Pan Alley micks and I have operatic training.)
Imagine this. Alderanian exiles. The music. It must be. So sappy. How good is Poe at it? So good. He knows a dozen songs like this that he can sing to reliably bring any sympathizer to sobbing tears.
Just imagine if this song were about an actually-vanished homeland, as opposed to one politically-fucked-up for so long that its main export has been its native human beings for like a couple hundred years, thus guaranteeing an enormous quantity of sentimental second-gen exiles. Yeah it’s a totally different vibe, but it’s a vibe, so follow me down this rabbit-hole.
I haven’t done a ton of the required readings and all, but I know that after the destruction of Alderaan, Leia went around collecting Alderanians, and the Empire went around massacring them.
So a sentimental Alderanian song would be a massive dog-whistle. I mean massive. If you don’t know it’s about Alderaan (which, maybe you’re carved from wood, I don’t know), it’s just tripe, but if you know, it’s pure heartstring-yanking crack.
So whether or not Poe knew Lor San Tekka or not (is it canon or just well-supported speculation that the guy who had the map to Luke was Alderanian? insisting on Leia’s princesshood etc.), if he just sort of wandered around Jakku humming a song like this one to himself, it would be about thirty seconds before someone would drag him into a tent and go get San Tekka.
Poe’s connection to Alderaan is nil, but when it turned out he was good at music, he learned all the songs anyway because they just seemed like good things to have. It got him in a lot of fights in the Fleet, because a good way to weed out the ones you didn’t want to be friends with anyway is to sing Alderanian songs at Open Mike Night and see who gets pissy and who gets misty-eyed.
(con’t music series from novel etc)
OK. So. Typed then deleted thousand-word rant on my own experience singing folk music. We’re not here about that. (Ask me sometime about the bartender and I trolling the St. Pat’s crowds with an incredibly over-the-top rendition of Danny Boy that actually made some people cry, and I kept a straight face and I know both verses, okay, I know my Tin Pan Alley micks and I have operatic training.)
Imagine this. Alderanian exiles. The music. It must be. So sappy. How good is Poe at it? So good. He knows a dozen songs like this that he can sing to reliably bring any sympathizer to sobbing tears.
Just imagine if this song were about an actually-vanished homeland, as opposed to one politically-fucked-up for so long that its main export has been its native human beings for like a couple hundred years, thus guaranteeing an enormous quantity of sentimental second-gen exiles. Yeah it’s a totally different vibe, but it’s a vibe, so follow me down this rabbit-hole.
I haven’t done a ton of the required readings and all, but I know that after the destruction of Alderaan, Leia went around collecting Alderanians, and the Empire went around massacring them.
So a sentimental Alderanian song would be a massive dog-whistle. I mean massive. If you don’t know it’s about Alderaan (which, maybe you’re carved from wood, I don’t know), it’s just tripe, but if you know, it’s pure heartstring-yanking crack.
So whether or not Poe knew Lor San Tekka or not (is it canon or just well-supported speculation that the guy who had the map to Luke was Alderanian? insisting on Leia’s princesshood etc.), if he just sort of wandered around Jakku humming a song like this one to himself, it would be about thirty seconds before someone would drag him into a tent and go get San Tekka.
Poe’s connection to Alderaan is nil, but when it turned out he was good at music, he learned all the songs anyway because they just seemed like good things to have. It got him in a lot of fights in the Fleet, because a good way to weed out the ones you didn’t want to be friends with anyway is to sing Alderanian songs at Open Mike Night and see who gets pissy and who gets misty-eyed.
via http://ift.tt/1Ma0k56:
My dude is severely disappointed that I cannot hook him up with acres of Trubama slash because the state visitation has been so eclipsed by Civil War trailer spam.
I don’t know why he is so excited about Trudeau/Obama, but he is, and I’m sorry I haven’t been able to wade through to find him any.
My dude is severely disappointed that I cannot hook him up with acres of Trubama slash because the state visitation has been so eclipsed by Civil War trailer spam.
I don’t know why he is so excited about Trudeau/Obama, but he is, and I’m sorry I haven’t been able to wade through to find him any.
via http://ift.tt/1pjgyUX:
rosaline-queen-of-apricots:
bomberqueen17:
My dude is severely disappointed that I cannot hook him up with acres of Trubama slash because the state visitation has been so eclipsed by Civil War trailer spam.
I don’t know why he is so excited about Trudeau/Obama, but he is, and I’m sorry I haven’t been able to wade through to find him any.
amazing
Update: I got home and was like “I’m sorry I couldn’t find you much, whence this sudden hankering?” and he was like “I dunno! I just– I saw a picture of the two of them together and I was like those dudes look like they should have fanfiction! Those are some photogenic dudes!”
So I mean. If anybody’s got any Trubama, hook a sister up, because I don’t usually get requests like that.
I remember back in ‘04 one of you used to write Kerry/Edwards. That was back before portmanteau ship names were a thing. Which of you was it???? It was someone I still know, I’m almost sure of it. (Not quite sure of it.) … Wait that’s twelve years ago. That can’t be right. *hyperventilates*
The AO3 tag is a little sparse, but does exist!
rosaline-queen-of-apricots:
bomberqueen17:
My dude is severely disappointed that I cannot hook him up with acres of Trubama slash because the state visitation has been so eclipsed by Civil War trailer spam.
I don’t know why he is so excited about Trudeau/Obama, but he is, and I’m sorry I haven’t been able to wade through to find him any.
amazing
Update: I got home and was like “I’m sorry I couldn’t find you much, whence this sudden hankering?” and he was like “I dunno! I just– I saw a picture of the two of them together and I was like those dudes look like they should have fanfiction! Those are some photogenic dudes!”
So I mean. If anybody’s got any Trubama, hook a sister up, because I don’t usually get requests like that.
I remember back in ‘04 one of you used to write Kerry/Edwards. That was back before portmanteau ship names were a thing. Which of you was it???? It was someone I still know, I’m almost sure of it. (Not quite sure of it.) … Wait that’s twelve years ago. That can’t be right. *hyperventilates*
The AO3 tag is a little sparse, but does exist!