A bit weird out of context

1420 written tonight to conclude the scene, bringing this particular excerpt up to 4120 words. Overall, I've got 13,477 words in the story. Can I keep going on a different scene? *pretends to ponder* Hell yes I can!

So, since I've been in therapy, I've realized that I don't need my DW account for my "Stories I Never Tell" anymore--I am telling them, to a licensed therapist, who's helping me work through those issues.
Since I wasn't using this journal for that purpose anymore, I needed to decide what I *was* going to use it for. And tonight, I've decided: FANFICTION.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen and other people who defy the gender binary! FANFIC BY DRUIDSPELL, once again being posted on the internet!

Starting with Glee fic, probably, but I also have ( a kink_bingo card! )
The odds are really, really good that I'm going to be writing a lot of Puck/Rachel and Santana/Brittany fic in the next few weeks/months, until I finish at least one bingo on this thing. :D

So, this is a public entry [which is potentially triggering in regard to rape]. *waves to the public* I haven't made one of these for fun in a while--it's been a fannish "These things I find unacceptable" type of year for public posts. (I promise, my next public post will be a meme or a quiz!)
Unfortunately, this is not going to be a fun post; this is going to be a post addressing things I find unacceptable in fandom right now. (It's motivated by this post by seperis, which she wrote in reaction to this VERY NSFW and POSSIBLY TRIGGERY piece of protest art. (SERIOUSLY UNSAFE FOR WORK, PEOPLE.) alchemia made that photo manip of Ogi Ogas engaged in some rousing tentacle sex as a reaction to SurveyFail.

Bullet Points!
SurveyFail
Let me explain. ... No, is too long. Let me sum up:
*Drs. Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam are writing a book called "Rule 34: What Netporn Teaches Us About the Brain." Despite the book's release date being in 2010, they are apparently just starting their research. In the course of their research, they revealed themselves as homophobic, biphobic, transphobic, misogynist, willfully ignorant, condescending shitheads who are bad scientists with bad methodology, little to no grasp of the ethics of research involving human subjects, and no desire to truly learn from their mistakes and the valuable information and insight fandom was willing to offer them.

Protests!
*In protest of their treatment of the members of our community, some fen have decided to educate these two "researchers" about certain rules of fandom: 1) "Don't Mess With Slashers, for You Are Cute and Look Good With Other Men" (warnings for Real Person Slash) (here, here, and a poem that is not slashy but is lolarious here; and 2) "Fuck Not With Fandom: Fandom Fucks Back, and You Can Forget About the Lube" (the aforementioned protest art that is still NSFW).

My Reaction
( Time for an anecdote. )


Anyway, as always, it is Defriending Amnesty Day around here all day, every day, including weekends and bank holidays. If what I've said is offensive to you, feel free to defriend me.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Yesterday was my first concert ever! Joe, Robert, Hanah, and I drove up to Indianapolis' White River State Park to see Believers Never Die Part Deux, with Hey Monday, All Time Low, Cobra Starship, and Metro Station opening for Fall Out Boy.

( So yeah, here's the recap I wrote at 6 something this morning after being up for 22 and a half hours. )

When I finished writing this on paper, I'd been up for 22.5 hours. I was so tired, but a good tired. My feet hurt like hell, though; I wore the boots Jay got me, and much as I love them, they were not meant to wear to a concert like Believers Never Die. I had such a great time, though. And, fun fact for next time I go to a concert with no seating: Standing in the middle, where the crowd breaks? Best view, and nobody crushes you to get your spot.

I have six invite codes, available to six people who rec me their favorite always-a-girl genderswap fics! (specifically in Firefly/Serenity, bandslash (the modern meaning, with MCR/FBR/Decaydance bands), SGA, SG1 S8-S10)
Comment with recs and email.

Ugh. On the one hand, today was absolutely gorgeous--80*, wonderful breeze until about 4 pm. On the other hand, after 4 pm, the breeze completely died, and it was still 80*. I love Fi and Jay, but seriously, I hate hot weather. This whole Texas 2010 thing will definitely be a test of endurance and friendship. I spent most of today wearing very little, and ate two (2!!!) bowls of ice cream to try and lower my internal temperature. For a while, when my apartment was in the 80s, I actually turned on my air conditioning for about 3 hours. >< Boo, hot weather.

May 15 is only 19 days away! I'm going to see Fall Out Boy in concert in Indianapolis.
This will be my first concert, and, um, I have no idea what to wear. Like, at all. I mean, clothes, obviously, but what do you wear to a FOB concert? How do I not know these things? ><

My life, so hard.

I've talked around Ross' sickness a lot--the most common phrase I use is a variation on "when I was twelve, I watched this boy die by inches." And for what it is, that's a phrase that says a lot: I was young, he was incredibly sick, the illness lasted a long time and took him away bit by bit.
Here's what I haven't said since I actually was twelve.

First, the basic facts:

1. Ross is my younger cousin on my mom's side; his mother is my mom's "Irish twin" sister.
   
   • Mom and Aunt Anne are 376 days apart. Mom is the oldest in her family of 8 siblings; the five oldest are all roughly a year or so apart--the biggest age gap is between Aunt Anne and the next sibling, my Aunt Doris.
   
   
2. Ross is often referred to as my twin separated at birth (by five years, two different sets of parents, and different hospitals.) He's my mini-me, my best friend, my most treasured person in my life.
   
   • Possibly even more than my soulsister, but it's hard to say; once someone's that close, it becomes a "how many angels on the head of a pin" question: it's impossible to answer for sure, and debating it is something only people with a lot of time on their hands and a desperate need of a hobby discuss.
   
   
3. I began babysitting Ross every Friday night when I was eleven and he was six; I stole the job from my older sister Stephanie.
   
4. In April 1998, when he was six and a half years old, he began complaining of leg pain. His mother took him to the pediatrician, who couldn't find a reason for the pain, but advised him to take hot baths to relax his leg muscles and ease the pain.
   
5. In July 1998, the family took a trip down to Huntsville, Alabama to celebrate the wedding of my Uncle Willie. Ross complained of such severe pain that several of our relatives were concerned. Aunt Anne was mostly frustrated at this point; for three months he'd been complaining, and there was no reason any doctor could find for him to be hurting.
   
6. By late September 1998, in the space of five months, Ross had been to the pediatrician more than most children go the doctor in five years. He'd gotten every diagnosis from growing pains (hot baths, exercise) to constipation (drinking castor oil every night before supper and again before bed) to making it all up for attention. He was taking two or three hot baths a night, because the pain wouldn't stop--he'd take more when I was babysitting; four was typical, but five or six weren't out of the question.
   
7. Early October 1998: Ross turned seven. His birthday was on a Sunday, and I remember that it was a perfect fall day: sunny, clear, a little windy, and the trees were turning from green to gold and orange and red. Everything was idyllic. He tried to get me to play Pokemon with him, and we played with his massive collection of LEGOs and dinosaurs; he had that Jurassic Park dinosaur toy whose rib meat detached and showed the bone and bloody muscle... it was my favorite.
   
8. This was when I was in 6th grade, and our school district had just moved to modified-year-round schedule, which gave us two weeks off in October. Two days after his birthday, my sister and I were at home when our grandmother called. I answered the phone, and she said that Ross was in the hospital; some tests from the doctor had come back with results the doctor didn't like, but she didn't say what they were.
   
   • The next night, Aunt Anne called with the test results and the diagnosis.
   
   
9. I was in the living room watching Full House in the dark, and Stephanie, Mom, and Andrea (home on break from college) were in the kitchen talking. Mom answered when Aunt Anne called, and I thought I heard them say the word "cancer." I came into the kitchen, and I remember blinking because the bright light disoriented me. Andrea and Steph looked really upset, and Mom told me that Ross had cancer.
   
10. I remember being frozen--I know that I must have started to cry. Andrea tried to hug me, and I shoved her away and started to walk, then run, to the back of the house where my bedroom was. I slammed the door shut, punched the wall a few times, and then did that slow slide down the wall crying all the while. (People say that nobody does that in real life, that it's a chick flick cliche. As one friend so memorably, so pithily, puts it: They can suck my clit. I've done it, and my life is not a chick flick.)
    
11. The next day, we went to see Ross in Kosair Hospital. The 7th floor is (or was at the time) their oncology ward. [Just as a side note: there is NOTHING sadder than a pediatric oncology ward.] We stepped off the elevator and the sound of screams immediately assaulted our ears. I don't remember the hallways we walked through, just that it sounded like we were getting closer and closer to the mouth of hell, and the wailing of the damned just kept getting louder and louder. When we reached Ross' room, of course, we discovered that it was coming from him. (He was only barely seven, had been told he had cancer, pulled out of his school, told he'd be staying in the hospital, denied food and water, and wasn't on sufficient pain medication. He was scared and in pain and so fucking young.)

Amazon Rank

Ugh, am sick. Didn't sleep well; judging from my dreams last night, I can safely conclude that apparently my subconscious believes that picking up dog crap is indicative of great passion, and feels strongly that Waffle House was a classy little sidewalk bistro in another life.
(This was a dream where I was not featured at all; it was more like watching a TV show, but better.)

Y'all, I have a sickness. I cannot stop doing this. As soon as one hatches, I go get another. D: But I need more!!





Also, I have Cotton Eyed Joe stuck in my head. I can't even explain that one, but it's hella catchy. (I'm evil, but I do kinda hope that at least one of you gets earwormed; if I have to suffer, I want to share.)

I've formed the kind of friendships that refuse to be casual my entire life. When I consider you one of my best friends, it means that I literally have a hard time picturing my life without you in it. And that does mean that yeah, it takes me a while to build up to a relationship where I'm willing to name you "friend", let alone one of my closest friends. But it also means that once I do... you're a part of my life forever.
My first best friend was Ria--we met when we were less than a year old, played together every day until my family and I moved away, and stayed friends through three grade schools, high school, and three colleges. When good things happen in her family, I celebrate because it's almost as good as a happy event in my family. (Sometimes it's better.) When hard things happen, I grieve with her, because anything that causes her pain hurts me as well.
Chronologically, my next best friend was Bridgette. She was... Bridgette was my entire world. And even when she was much more important to me than I was to her, I still made her my world, still put her on a pedestal, because she was everything. I realized a while ago that I fell in love with her sometime between age 6 and age 11, and I never really fell *out* of love with her, even though it's been 11 years since we named each other our mutual best friends. I haven't seen her in more than 4 years, and I still think of her almost every day.
(Fiona and Shannon, I met at almost the same time, through the same venue, and I was a little in awe of these two.)
Fiona was someone who made me feel welcome at DarkForest, who wrote with me and chatted with me, who made me feel more secure in my own sanity because there was someone else in the world who felt some of the same things I felt. And we had some iffy patches, times when we were on opposite sides of the issue at hand. But Fi never once made me feel like she didn't respect my feelings, or my right to believe what I wanted to believe (whether or not she felt like I was wronger than a wrong thing). These days, she's still one of my best friends, and I'll be moving in with her in August 2010, when I move to Texas. I explained to Thomas and Darkstar, when we were talking once before her second visit to Kentucky, that she's like my spiritual packmate.
Shannon was someone who, when I met her, made me want to be better. And it was a desire she inspired in me the entire time that we were writing together, through good times and bad. It's true what they say, nobody hurts you like best friends and family, because oh gods, we hurt each other badly. The two of us broke each others hearts. But this past summer, Shannon took a major step, coming down to Kentucky, and we managed to talk to each other face to face for the first time and hash out some of the things we'd done and what we'd learned from them, and I still think that I've learned more from Shannon in 9 years than I've learned from nearly anyone else I've ever met. She still makes me want to be better.
Jacynthia I met when I was four, but at the time, you couldn't stretch any definition of "friend" to include what our relationship to one another was. I was the bratty little sister of her best friend, and they hated it when I tagged along on their adventures. It wasn't until my freshman year, when I tagged along on the Speech Team adventure to the Cave Run Storytelling Festival, that we became friends ourselves. Once we became friends, though, "living out of each other's pockets" wouldn't be an inaccurate description of our lives. It was with Jacynthia that I met Mommy--who has shaped us both, for good and for ill--, with Jacynthia that I got my first (and hopefully last) job in retail, with Jacynthia that I braved the bad side of the barrio, college, and assorted (mis)adventures on the Planes. I'd pick her at my side over entire armies, and together I think we'd win.
If I had to conquer the world, I think I might make Ross my military brain. I would not let him clone me, as he's been hoping to do since he was 6. (Make A Wish wouldn't let him clone me either; I think that's how he ended up with a Furby instead of a trip to Jurassic Park or a chance to meet the guy who played Boba Fett for his wish.) I would choose him at his worst over the rest of the world at their best, and I'll tell you why: When I was twelve years old, I watched this boy die by inches, then make a recovery that I still can't call anything but miraculous. Ross single-handedly restored almost complete faith in the existence of God for me.

I wouldn't be anywhere today without these people. If there's anything you love about me? You can thank one of them for encouraging that quality.