Chaucerettescs

For Sean. I was bored:



I adore Halloween and am so.pumped.for.the.party. As I mentioned to Leah, Nick and I might be up to a half an hour late. Neither he nor I have the gas money this week for me to go get him, so his parents need to do it. Problem is, his mum can't get there until 6-6:30, putting him in Brighton around 7:45. Wonderful. And I can't go on ahead because he needs to come to my place for part of his costume. Being dressed like Marie Antoinete will probably make waiting around even more depressing.

In other news, I changed my own earrings without assitance and/or flailing, which is good. The one ear is still very difficult to work with since it has a big bump at the site of the piercing, making it hard to find the exit hole.

Finally, I need to go in and talk to my counselors this week as I would like to finish my Associate's this upcoming semester. However, that means taking 22 credits when the maximum is 17. But it's only six classes (only one more than what I'm taking this semester) and only 4 more hours of class a week than what I'm taking his semester. Which I'm more than capable of handling, but I know they're going to dick with me. That's the only thing I dislike about Community College, the counselors can be very condescending. They don't mean to be; they just are. Take the average bumbling counselor and multiply it by 3. It's like they assume that because you're at Community, you must be stupid, which is an implication I resent as stupid people are the exception there, not the rule. Our teachers don't treat us like morons, so why should the administration? Whatever.

Nick came over the other night and we watched a great deal more of Rome. We did however end up falling asleep until my mum woke us at 4 am since Nick was supposed to be home at around 2. I don't recall much about that part, though I do remember using the phrase "I am a sleepy ungulate" a few times which... what?

( Doodly doodle )

You know what's fun about coloring on the computer?

( You can so fucking cheat at textures )
Aww, I'm sure everything's going to work out for them... Er...

B'aww, her little vice grip. You know, I find Mel and Ben bonding to be much cuter when I'm PMS-ing. ...I'm not entirely sure what that says about me, but there it is. Of course, PMSing also makes me find Ben/Lena sexier and allows me to smell colors, so what do I know?

... why the fuck aren't I sleeping?

Ok, so, I have a math test on Wednesday and on Thursday, I have an in-class writing exam in Comp, a Psych test, and my presentation due in Shakespeare. So. Much. Fail.

Oh, well, I at least have the play to forward to this Sunday. And nex weekedn I am stealing Katelyn from school :D :D :D

Back to the schoolwork though... BLERGH. I so just want to be writing right now. Writing... what exactly, I'm not sure, but that doesn't matter! I do know I want to move away from the villains for a while, since everything I have been writting lately (which includes rhetorical court transcripts, btw) has been about them and it's beginning to depress me. Seriously, writing about them is like writing an entirely different book. And when Ben is a sympathetic characer by comparison to the others, I need to take a break. (Though, Jesus, Roger gives me the creeps sometimes. One of my favorites is probably when Ben, Roger, and John went to Vegas and he insisted on driving four hours North, without telling where they were going. Their destination? Spahn Ranch, the last known home of The Manson Family. To his credit, Ben does call him a fucking ghoul and insist they leave. See what I mean? I hate writing "to his credit, Ben..." period. That scene btw would be in the rhetorical Ben/Lena book... the one I'm totally not writing. Ahem.)

Anyway, as a breakoff point from villainhood for the time being, I did a less-than-serious villain mix. Bouncier, melodramatic, more prone to making them look like the moronic weirdos they are.

There are three tracks from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on here. As I mentioned in an e-mail to Jess, whether or not a person finds something to like about Dr. Horrible has become my catalyst for determining whether or not a character has a soul or not (Roger hates it, btw).


Voltaire, Margo Guryan, The Magnetic Fields, Felicia Day, Neil Patrick Harris, Ben Folds Five, Scissor Sisters, The White Stripes, Donovan, Green Day, My Chemical Romance

( It's a bitch convincing people to like you )

ZIP

Hooray, last of the sins. Once again, Ben is all over this shit. Good to know he's so well-rounded. :/


The Go-Go's, Porcelain & The Tramps, Sneaker Pimps, Covenant, Louis XIV, They Might Be Giants, The New Pornographers, Pearl Jam, The 88, Robbie Williams, Alanis Morissette, The Decemberists, Iron & Wine, Rufus Wainwright

( I built a little empire out of some crazy garbage Called the blood of the exploited working class But they've overcome their shyness Now they're calling me Your Highness And a world screams, Kiss me, Son of God! )

ZIP

I am tired and sated on good barbecue.

Lol, tonight was my dad/uncle's birthday party (their birthdays are seven years and one day apart) and my uncle was ripped on Tequila and kept trying to start shit with me about politics and Obama. It went on for about two minues before Grandma Liz snapped, "Craig, will you shut up with that stupid shit?" Hee!

Sin numbah six: Wrath, or How Ben and Roger would really like to beat the shit out of each other. Is it bad that if Ben actually had just beaten and killed Roger at the end of the first book, I'd actually have a modicum of respect for Ben? I think I've been watching too much overdramatic sci-fi. It's also probably bad that wanting to beat the living shit out of Roger is probably the only thing Ben and Mel have bonded over.


The Decemberists, Built to Spill, Hera, Bjork, Bonnie Prince Billy, Disturbed, Breaking Benjamin, Archive, Colin Meloy, Soundgarden, Elliott Smith, Rob Dougan, Imogen Heap, Greenskeeper

( I won't rest my head until Hell is your home )

ZIP

1. I am prety damn stoked for Tuesday night's inauguration.
2. I am loving my four-day weekend.
3. I am, however, feeling a little discombobulated because someone close to me has begun doing something that sort of...caught me by surprise. *ahem* That's all I'm gonna say. I mean, it's one of those things where you know they're going to do it eventually but... Jesus, just hold on a minute.
4. Speaking of which, I've been trying to write Mel and Adge's first time. Also their time on the motorbike...though ever since mum told me and Katelyn that she and her boyfriend actually had sex on their motorbike... I've developed some selective writer's block. At least Mel and Adge's bike wasn't fucking moving at the time.
5. Writing's actually been going fairly well. I have about a dozen scenes I'm working on/about to start. So that's good. I normally try to stay unsentimental about the whole thing but lately I've been fleshing out Gael and last night it hit me hard in the gut that I'm really heartbroken that he has to die. I mean... I felt devastated. Devastated in a way that is completely ridiculous since he's bloody fictional. Still though...gah. :(
I don't know, I must be hormonal. I actually felt like crying.
6. Several of the scenes I('m/'ve) writ(ten/ing) have featured Ben and Lena and while I am guilty of being fond of them as a couple, they are beginning to give me a brain fissure. Therefore! I am putting my mind back on my other young brunette couple. And the best way to do that is, of course, fanmixes!


Two of them in fact. They're not quite EPs but they're much smaller than my usual mixes. The first is sort of Mel/Adge from age 7 to 14, the second ages 15 to 20.

Patrick Wolf, Beach House, Air, The Cardigans, Sufjan Stevens, Priscilla Ahn, Sigur Ros

( 'Cause you and me, So happily, Make all our dreams of make believe reality )

Liars, Iron & Wine, The Hush Sound, City and Colour, Margot & The Nuclear So & So's Kings of Convenience, The Shins, The Magnetic Fields

( And her dignity shown so bright like a light on a hill. And she burned for me, and no other man came near the flame. And back country songs, the defeaning twang of the rich-white-kid blues You can own the stage, but the lights and glares will not make you real. She whispers to me, I was meant to be free. This life that we've built is deadly.  )

It's embarrassing how excied I was when I found that piano pic. Lol.
Zip of both mixes

Right, so lately I've been making myself miserable trying to think of a possible new title for Swacit (since "Somewhere a Clock is Ticking" is the name of a Snow Patrol song). I'm not sure you're allowed to name a book after a song that isn't yet public domain, even though bands steal names from books all the time (My Chemical Romance comes from an Irvine Welsh novel and Steely Dan is the name of the dildo in Naked Lunch, which, heh...)

The trouble is I now have the title so interwoven into the themes of the book that I don't want to change it and even if I did, wouldn't know what to change it to.

How about...

The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill... and Came Back Down Dead.

Wait... shit...

Chase's suggestions: Someplace A Clock is Ticking or A Clock Ticks... Somewhere
AHA! I see what you did there.

Lol, I'm screwed when it comes to naming the second one.

I did go ahead and change Adge's last name to Landau. It needed to be more Jewish. I've been writing a scene with his grandma, btw. All I'll say is that it includes a good deal of Yiddish and the line "Mama, please don't rub Melanie's uterus." Good times.

When Katelyn was over the other night, we started weaving plot bunnies which I'm going to post here lest I forget them:

( Kippers, Confession, Portraits, Marzipan, and Sex Talks )

Lol, I love riffing with Katelyn about this sort of crap. I always end up laughing until my throat hurts. Often, the voices are the best part, not that you can tell here. (btw, the priest occasionally sounds inexplicably like Yoda).

P.S. I've decided I still want to do the Ben/Lena book. Tonight I discovered tha when Paris was bombed in 95, the first station to be hit was literally right across the street from where I had them living. I am intrigued.

Lol, so guys... you remember at the New Year's party when the French's love of burning cars for any occasion, happy or sad, was brought up? Guess what the French were doing the exact moment we were discussing it.

This is why I love the French. Their spontaneity can always be counted on.

New Swacit mix. I seriously have a huge backup of mixes I want to post. So many I don't even want to go about posting them. However, after losing 50% of my music last year during the crash, the mixes online proved quite useful. So there we are. I need to post Alan's and about 5 general eps and a Seven Deadly Sins set that was very fun to make, and an embarassingly huge Ben/Lena one (so huge in fact, I no longer need to write their book... I can just listen to that).

This one's pretty general and on the theme of time... which sort of a big one in the books.



( Your future says run )

ZIP

Yes, Mel does have a big clock-window like that in her house. And it is awesome.

And it's, like, long. Eleven pages, about 3800 words (so not long-long, but still long).

I am so glad to be done with this chapter since it took fucking forever to write. It's what I've been writing bit-by-bit since I've been sick (along with some other odds and ends) and I finally finished it this morning.

Things you should know so it makes sense:
1. Lena is awesome. That is all. She is also French, but you probably got that.
2. The chapter title and vaguely nauseating nickname come from the fact the Fairchilds' (is Fairchildren phonetically correct?) crest is a black rabbit (because I am easily amused). It'd be used in the emblem for the hotel, on their business stationary, etc. etc. "The Black Rabbit" was the name of the original inn, trust me... it's hard to miss.
3. This takes place May of 1995. So, right after Ben's 19th birthday. Mel and the boys would be fifteen.
4. This is before Gael came out. I imagine Lena's arrival as a bit of a catalyst in that department since Geoff and Alan's schoolboy crushes on her leave Gael more or less baffled. "I don't see what the fuss is."
5. You don't get much of a vibe from this chapter but Mel has a big I'm-fifteen-and-awkward hero worship of Lena going on. They have scenes of their own and it's really nice to have Mel interact with another girl for a change, lol.
6. Lol, apparently that May was actually pretty cold. This is one time I'm glad I was anal enough to look at old weather forecasts because apparently 95' was mostly cold as shit in England up until August.
7. Lena's mom is American, hence her very good English. She should have a strong accent, but I still don't know if I should actually write out her dialogue the way she'd pronounce it. It's sort of a pain in the ass that way and is tedious to read. All of Fleur Delacour's "Arry"'s and "eemprove my Eenglish"'s made me want to kill her, so I'm going to vote no.


Chapter (as yet unnumbered): Le Lapin Noir:

( Mel imagined, for a moment, something tentacled and bewildered flailing somewhere on a beach… but shook it off, knowing that if she laughed Ben would feel ethically obligated to kill her. )

Oh, Mel. If you only you knew what's going to happen when you start having sex, I think you'd feel less guilty.


Mel: 1
Ben: 0

That's better, bb.

I have to admit, I really love writing Ben/Lena dialogue. All they do is snark at each other when they aren't being gross.

However, I don't think I have the fortitude to give them their own book, interest in their backstory aside. They... touch each other too much. They just have one of those relationships where sex is hugely fundamental and out of all my pairings they probably have the least vanilla sex life and I wish I didn't know that, but I fucking do. It's just one of those things: Geoff's a manwhore, Rufus loves musical theatre, Ben and Lena probably have lots of weird, B & D sex. I don't care if they're physically attractive and I don't care if I do find them sort of sweet in a slightly whacked kind of way, my brain just cannot cope with that shit. Seriously, the mild touching in this was quite enough to make my mind recoil in horror and they're not even doing anything.

A mix for my favorite affluent, somewhat sex-addled family of brunettes.

I love this mix, ngl.


The Flying Lizards, Adam & The Ants, Gang of Four, Belle & Sebastian, Rufus Wainwright, Vampire Weekend, Amy MacDonald, Robbie Williams, Sinead O'Connor, Martha Wainwright, Ani DiFranco, KT Tunstall, Metric, Pedro the Lion, The Nields, K's Choice, Stereophonics, Blue October, Rilo Kiley, The Decemberists, The Magnetic Fields

( As you can clearly see, they're all terribly unfortunate looking )

It burns my eyes just looking at them. Truly.

Can I take a moment for some Oliver-appreciation? He doesn't get nearly enough.

( LOOK AT THIS FUCKING BARRISTER. SWEET MOTHER OF FUCK JUST ~LOOK~ AT THIS GQ MOTHERFUCKER RIGHT HERE )

I've been spending entirely too long on writing a chapter where Ben has actual human emotions and I need a good ole dollop of whydoyouhavetobesuchadick?Ben to cleanse my palette.

( It's crappily drawn comic time! )

( Writing Woes, or, Proof that My Sinus-Addled Brain Has Lost All Capacity to Do Simple Math )
tl;dr: My brain lately= epic fail. Also, lol, Ben and Roger had nothing better to do with their time than pick on 12 year olds. Hee, losers.

On a related note, the experiments that make Yahoo's headlines never fail to amuse: "Bullies may get kick out of seeing others in pain". Lol, no. way.

In celebration of the two brain-Methuselahs, they get a fanmix of their very own. Lol, this fanmix, like them, is old as dirt and, even after much revamping, still melodramatic as all hell.

Goes all the way from Ben's initial reaction to Mel/Adge through the aftermath of Gael's death through several years of bitterness through tentative reconcilition.

Ah, sweet sibling discord.


(  Passive-aggressive bullshit... Passive-aggressive bullshit... Passive-aggressive bullshit... )

ZIP
Sufjan Stevens- Sister (not included in zip because Mediafire is full of fail)

Proof that I have a fanmix for more or less everything.

I decided to go ahead and include a couple more scenes that expand on Roger's seriously fucking creepy interest in Mel, if only because I don't specify in the opening chapter which of the five friends will be dead before 20 and I want the reader to see that the threat that Roger and the others pose puts all of them in danger. That Mel's just as much at risk as the rest of them.

The more I do with Roger's character, the more he gives me the creeps.

Most of the songs are from Roger's POV, but features fierceassbitch!Mel at the end. : )



Run rabbit... run rabbit... run, run, run...
Run rabbit... run rabbit... run, run, run...
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Goes the farmer's gun.
Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run.
-British Nursery Rhyme

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Pink Floyd, Colin Meloy, VAST, Massive Attack, Disturbed, Imogen Heap

( And if it's the last thing I ever do... I'm gonna get you... )

ZIP FILE

Creepiest fanmix I've ever done, y/y?

If this sinus-induced equilibrium imbalance doesn't go away, I am going to. cut. a. bitch.

EDIT: I feel the need to add that I was going to include a similar Ben/Roger EP as a joke (to lighten the sheer creepy of this thing)... but I found it alarmingly easy to put together... so I stopped.

Why is it every time I find an actor that physically reminds me of Ben to an unsettling degree, the actor is always French? More importantly, how do I always end up finding films featuring that actor in gay love triangles?

I did a post a while back about Louis Garrel who so closely resembles the Ben I have in my head that it's quite eerie. Well, Louis (who, it must be said, I have developed a massive crush on) did a film. Or, rather, Louis did a musical. Or, rather, Louis did pretty much the French film equivalent of Rent.

He sings a song in French whilst in the midst of foreplay with another boy.

Let's repeat that: He sings a song in French whilst in the midst of foreplay with another boy.






Ben is totally skewing my aesthetic appreciation of something completely awesome.


This must be how Mel feels all the time.


(Adge knows what the fuck's up.)

New mix! w00t! This started off as a challenge to myself to see if I could make a Ben & co. EP with one song for each member of the gang but without any crazy hard rock. It went pretty well, so I made a Swaciteer one to match (you know, I really wish they had a proper canon name, but I can't think of anything that fits... plus I rather like Swaciteers).

I'm rather pleased with both EPs. I succeeded with the Scion one... most of the thing is just downright mellow. Lots of songs that sound pretty or bouncy... until you actually listen to the lyrics.

Gary Jules, Coldplay, Belle & Sebastian, John Lennon, Jump Little Children, Rufus Wainwright, The New Pornographers, Sufjan Stevens
vs.
Brainclaw, Iron & Wine, The Flaming Lips, Sunna, Firewater, Tori Amos, Neko Case, MCR

( All the Trees of The Field Will Clap Their Hands )

LOL at everyone being so pretty.

I really need to stop making these but they do wonders for writer's block, which I currently have a small case of. Dialogue and scene-ideas have been coming along brilliantly, but I'm having trouble with prose again. I swear, if this fucking thing was a play, I would've finished it years ago.

Writing the child abuse scenes is leaving me feeling very uncomfortable. I think the reason I've been hating less on Ben lately is I've been too busy despising Noah. Also, Roger. Ben's a complete cock but at least he's never held anyone down and burned them with cigarettes or made unwanted passes at fifteen-year-old girls.

....... Goddamn, do I hate some of my characters. : /

Oh, man, I think I may have found a way to start the first book. It's sort of like a prologue...only not the overly-expositional kind. Just a glimpse of the five kids on the hill in the evening, a bit of expostion, mood setting, and a reminder that one of these kids will be dead before they hit twenty (though, obviously, vague as to which one), theme stuff, blah blah blah. Hopefully, I'll be able to write it as awesomely as it is in my head (probably not x__x). The kids would be about seven and after that the next few chapters would circulate around the death of Alan's parents, etc.

Ok. I think I have a starting point.

New Fanmix time!


D.H.T., Alanis Morissette, Amy MacDonald, Clement & Murray, The Rasmus, The Presets, Lily Holbrook, Vienna Teng, Holly Brook, Poe
( Tonight the, Tonight the Hills are Watching Her as She Runs Toward the Sea... )
Aw, loss of innocence is a bummer.
Those Presets lyrics gave me goosebumps the first time I heard that song. Because I'm a dork.
Also, I've become totally obsessed with #6. Amy MacDonald is awesome.

Huzzah! I found a little notebook in one of my drawers stuffed with scenes written on scraps of notebook paper. I thought I'd lost some of this writing in my Great Mac Crash of 07. I'm still discovering what scenes did get lost and it never fails to be irritating as shit when I realize something else is missing.

In unrelated write-y writingness, I've been doing a lot of writing lately. Months of Writer's Block finally gone. What cured it was writing, out of nowhere, part of what could be a scene from the Ben/Lena standalone thingamajig. They are just so much stranger than my usual subject matter that it made everything else sort of... easier. Lol, that made sense.

Anyway, these are two long chunks from essentially the first five chapters of the second book (that is, the sequel, NOT the BenLena thingy). The first one still needs a lot of editing. Lol, it was fun to write. It's just silly and weird and I love remembering how wealthy the Fairchildren are if I can do stuff like this and Geoff always makes me smile.

( How I've Missed Writing Ben Being An Utter Twat )

Yay! I've been writing a lot this week. It's mostly second book stuff, but still... writing... lots of it. I'm really liking writing secondbook!Mel'n'Ben's relationship. It's like a fun tight rope act since I want them to be getting along a little better in that sort of awkward, quasi-reconciliatory way, but I don't really want to de-villainize Ben very much nor make Mel too complacent. That's one of my pet peeves... taking a villain and suddenly having him be all completely repentant and noble. I believe it's called schmoopification. It's exactly what ended up happening to Spike on Buffy. Though I do rather like the thought of Ben with a violence-inhibiting chip in his brain. Wacky fun.

Ok, I have to share this with everyone. Chase made me go to the new White Castle that opened up in Howell. I'd never had a White Castle Slider before and I have to say... that was the single most revolting thing I have ever put in my mouth.



I put that in my mouth. Ok? OK? Chase said it was worse because, while the Slider is meant to be eaten in two bites (they're very small), I couldn't open my still sore mouth very wide and had to take tiny bites. This, Chase explained, leaves you time to actually look at the thing. Plus, while White Castle Sliders are a favorite of potheads at 2 AM, I was, of course, completely sober and it was only 9 pm.

People eat these things. You can get like thirty of them in what is called a Suitcase.

I mean.... ugh, it was, like, wet. The only burger that'd be grosser would be Cheeseburger in a Can. Because that's just skanky. At least the Slider had tasty little onions on it and not unsweetened ketchup and rubbery cheese and what is possibly dogfood.

I have just made myself nauseous.

Bored.ded.ded.ded.
( I doodled two Mel, Adge, and Ben thingies. The first one's for the aw's and the second for the lols. )

EDIT: We're going to granddad's tomorrow for Father's Day. Which means grandma!cooking :D