"Bla bla bla professional pride bla bla circuitous logic bla bla LET ME ILLUSTRATE THE WAYS IN WHICH YOU ARE WRONG bla conclusion."

ETA: Too bad "this is a load of self-indulgent crap" is not a viable thesis.

THE HAND IN THE SPECIMEN JAR

This is an introduction to someone whose face you won’t recall.
This is goodbye without the rest of the body.
This is what stopped having a pulse.
This is a reason to go on living.
This is a specimen of loss. This is finders keepers.
This is Thursday when actually it's Monday.
This is coming home to a dog and one-third of the neighbor’s cat.
This is a departure from Rachmaninov.
This is possession.
This is letting go.


- Arlene Ang

I'm now in COLLEGE! Which explains why I'm not really that involved in fandom, for the moment. But rest assured, higher education can't keep me away for long. (I think. Those 6AM work-study shifts might, though.) And If I owe you stuff, I'm working on getting it to you.

OH MY GOD. JUST - YES. EXACTLY LIKE THAT.

...You guys, I seriously cannot express how much in love with this show I am right now, and how perfect the last three episodes were. I was never much into the Doctor Who fandom, but damn, I am getting really inspired now, because this is just - my show. My show, that makes me laugh and makes me cry and makes me clap my hands like a demented seal and squeal so loudly my dog starts barking.

This season = :D x infinity.

STOP POSTING ANIMATED .GIFS WITHOUT LJ-CUTS ARGH ARGH ARGH FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

For everysecondtuesday, whom I understand has been recently feeling rather under the weather. It's not your Sweet Charity fic, but it is Ruby! Religious Ruby, at that, and actually the converse to an earlier Castiel fanmix.

Oh God this is so tl;dr.

CASEY: Some demons lie. But some are true believers.
DEAN: Believers in what?
CASEY: You think humans have an exclusive on a higher power?
DEAN: You have a god?
CASEY: Sure. His name's Lucifer.

RUBY: I know it's hard to see it now... but this is a miracle. So long coming.

We first see the concept of demon religion in the third-season episode Sin City, when Dean meets the demon Casey, who is, as she puts it, a "true believer". Not much is said of it, and then we get Ruby, a seemingly benevolent demon who goads Sam into drinking demon blood in order to develop his Antichrist powers - which, in all fairness, didn't take much convincing on Ruby's part. Until the fourth-season finale we don't get an explanation for why she is helping Hunters - her natural enemies - out, though it's implied that Ruby may or may not be in love with Sam.

However, in the events of Lucifer Rising, we learn that Ruby is also a "true believer", and has manipulated the brothers and the situation in order to set her god free. In order to do so, she clawed herself up from hell; killed her fellow demons; brought to light the only human-wielded weapon that could kill them (and herself); was beaten up; was thrown back into hell and tortured for an indeterminate amount of time - the equivalent of a few above-ground weeks, at least - until Lilith trusted her enough to send her back above-ground; killed her kin again; ceded to humans; ceded to angels; was tortured again; hid her intentions and faith so thoroughly that the other demons thought she was a traitor to everything she was; and risked her life over and over again, nearly dying at the hands of demons, angels, and both Winchesters.

That is some impressive devotion. There are saints that put themselves through less than that.

It also makes for a quite fascinating character and raises some very interesting questions - just what is demon religion? How does it make sense of the world? Does it have guidelines, things that pious demons are supposed to do? A priesthood? How do you worship something in a world ruled by practical magic? - that I would have loved if they explored further, but, predictably enough, were never answered by Kripke et al. The closest we get is Ruby's self-congratulatory speech after Lilith's death - which seems less like boasting and more like a spontaneous outburst of joy and secrets kept too long. In it, she calls Lucifer's rising a "miracle" - which could either be a) the closest English word to what a demon would call it in their own language (do they have a language?), the closest way to get Sam to understand her, or b) that again, there's more to this demon faith than entrails and sulfur - and implies that this was her goal all along.

Based on this, it's probably fair to say that almost every decision she made throughout the series was calculated to bring her god freedom and herself closer to him - and maybe there were unseen complications, like her affection (love?) for Sam, but the principal remains the same. Everything is driven by it. In many ways, the story of Ruby is the story of her faith - a perversely religious saga comparable to any of the stories of the opposition (i.e. the Christian God/YHWH).

In short, it's a side of Ruby that doesn't often get play. (Of course, I'd settle for play of any side that's not "evil bitch getting in-between the Winchesters!!!!1!") So I made a fanmix about it.

{ Also, a note probably worth putting down: I'm not advocating Satan worship, or trying for blasphemy, or insulting Christianity or people of faith. All of this is theoretical, within the context of a television show about two good-looking brothers driving around America and having homoerotic adventures with the Judeo-Christian pantheon. In short, fiction. So please don't flame. }




( In the burning fuselage of my days, let my mouth be ever fresh with praise. )

Okay, I give up. There is no way on Earth that my lgbtfest entry will be ready by midnight. I don't know when, exactly, the tiny tense Mary/OFC fic that I was writing grew into a freaking novella - 4000 words before OFC is even introduced! 1000-word scenes! This never happens to me! - but it did, and it's going to take it's sweet time finishing, and drive me insane in the meantime.

(I suspect a lot of my irritation with this fic has a lot to do with the fact that I'm writing about a bunch of things that I know nothing about, like "guns", and "how to fix cars" when I don't even know how to drive. And babies. I'll admit I'm relying on thefourthvine's Earthling posts to an embarrassing degree, since I don't know a ten-month-old baby from a newborn from a potato! Thank god for babysitting; at least I have a vague idea of what five-year-olds are like.)

everysecondtuesday, it may... er, be a while before I get back your Mary/Ruby. BUT IT WILL HAPPEN. (My track record this year notwithstanding.)

AAARGH WHY IS WRITING LIKE TRYING TO SPIT UP NAILS AND THEN SWALLOW THEM AGAIN?????!!!!

Sometime in the last year or so, writing has gotten hard.

Also, does anyone know if they had baby carriers (the type you strap on your back, like a cross between a tiny parachute harness and a backpack - I think they're called Snugglies) in the early 80s? And if not, how would you go about carrying a baby for a long distance without tiring out your arms? I don't know why anyone would know this, really, but I've already exhausted my usual sources of historical knowledge (i.e. my parents), as they weren't carrying a baby (i.e. me) around until the 90s.

First of all, apologies to anyone who's waiting with baited breath (including, um, my assignee) for my remix. I was a very bad remixer this year, and actually had to drop out. Long story short, I severely overestimated my capability to multitask, and then got a fever and was stuck in bed for the duration of my extension. But, despite all this, I myself was remix'd!

For those of you who remember Mary, Melusine, Mary, Medea - the subtle horror, October-tinged McKay/Sheppard-with-Sheppard-backstory that apparently gave some people nightmares - this is a remix of that: Mary, Melusine, Mary, Medea (the Life As a Spinning Wheel Remix). And it is glorious. As the (as yet unknown) remixer said in her notes, "There's this really creepy question in the original story that I kept spying out of the corner of my eye: do people get taken, or do they just disappear? Is something sinister happening, or is it just... one of those things? It was a question I only touched on, but the remixer expanded into a fascinatingly creepy ambiguity, making this the ultimate interpretive story. While, despite which way the answer went, the McKay/Sheppard relationship in the original could only be read one way, the remixer turned the Life As a Spinning Wheel Remix either into a triumphant, hopeful account of John slowly opening up to Rodney and maybe even falling in love - or John as the mount of an unknown horror, a mysterious dark hunger riding on his back, following him into his home; a John who's fighting against unassailable odds, and losing.

SUPER-HUGE FUCK-OFF LIST OF VID RECS IS UP!