minavox

There are words I only ever encountered in fanfic. Words like muchneglected, as in: Merlin fumbled with the fastenings of his breeches to pay some attention to his own muchneglected cock.

But now, as the grandparents have arrived on the scene and the kids have attached themselves like leeches, there actually is time to start the book on The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites - and just some pages in I find this praise of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's apparently beautiful looks:

His thick, beautiful, and closely curled masses of rich brown muchneglected hair fell about an ample brow, and almost to the wearer's shoulders. (And so fort, covering nearly every part of the male physique thinkable.)
Sounds like LOTRips, but was actually written 1894 by someone called F.G.Stephens.

Now I just wait for muchneeded to crop up. Hopefully exactly like in muchneeded friction. You never know with these painters... :)

Holy shit.
Perhaps typing it makes it more real? 7:1. 7:1. 7:1.

Nope. :)

This morning I was rudely awoken from a dream in which my mind somehow created a Merlin AU with elements from Karl May (lovely German author of tons of purplest prosed adventure novels with strong slashy undercurrents - well, you could easily call him the German Godfather of Slash, I guess).

It featured Arthur as a frustrated, closeted arts teacher in a sort of 50ies setting (Details are hazy, as it tends to be in dreams...). During his lessons one pupil (Merlin?) outs himself, using his teacher's former art - and then Arthur decides to stop the lying. A pupil suddenly notices that in reality he does not really look dull, but has some sharp blue eyes hiding behind some sort of permanent eye infection he never cured or cared to have cured (she also immediately thinks of an easy cure, the good Mary Sue soul, bless her - and if this doesn't scream Sir David Lindsay (a character by May) I don't know how dreams work).

Cue in forboding of dramatic outing, where Arthur digs up old paintings he did (reminding of Paul Klees works from Tanger or where it was) and asks someone in the archive to look for some quotes from Karl May's Oriental books (did I mention the slashy undercurrent - which is more of an overcurrent...) to help him along -

- and then the alarm clock went off.
Raaaah!
I guess, this happens when doing a re-read of There are no gays in football and listen to the whole Student Prince while lying in bed with a fever next to a book-shelf brimming with Karl May novels, but still: How will I ever find out how this story ends???

This is what happens if you let loose two barely awake adults and two much too awake children on an at best half remembered classical German poem. At 7:15 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
(Sorry, am not able to provide a translation. It's only funny if you know the original, anyway. And it's about pears. And a slightly creepy, but fondly remembered senior citizen....)

Herr Ribbeck zu Ribbeck im Havelland
immer und immer im Garten stand.
Sein Birnbaum war noch nicht so weit
egal, zu welcher Jahreszeit.

The End.

It's this time of the year again!

So far it's been a pretty good Berlinale. I saw all the movies I had to, I only slept through half of one, and I have been on time for all of them. This has never happened before.

I notice some trends in the movies I chose: most of them took place in winter (well, if that means I'm done with RL winter for this season I won't complain), an awful lot worked with a fixed camera - no jittery handcamera, very loooong and calm scenes (although the movie which showed a buddhist monk walking as slow as humanly possible through Marseille perhaps overdid it a bit...) (to be fair, the summary did promise exactly this) (and it had the strange charm of looking like Where's Wally? being made into a movie with real actors: Where's the Crawling Monk?) - and in nearly each of them the story or, to be precise, the male main character was driven by a woman getting beaten, raped, misused, humiliated... you get the picture. To which I say WTF???

To soothe my bleeding heart today I first saw a quite disturbing film with Cillian Murphy (in which at least he didn't beat women but instead had sex with each of them who was around for longer than a day. I think the female director wanted to make the most of hiring him. Script necessities it were definitely not) and then saw Cillian Murphy in person at the press conference. Nice!

Now somehow till tomorrow somehow 6 short radio features need to be written. Be someone. I fear it might be me... :)

I'm old enough to know better. Don't follow the lure of the WIP. You think you'll get a tiny glimpse, just to decide if it's worth waiting for. Then you tell yourself there's still so much left, surely one tiny chapter more will be ok. And then there's the end of the document and the long, dry season of anxious tapping of the F5 key begins...

So, since misery loves company: Three wonderful and very differently unfinished WIPs I enjoyed recently!

Four Seasons in one day by hope: This is something I never read before: Arthur as a not-so-out-and-not-so-proud law student who shares not only a house with an artsy Merlin and Merlin's girlfriends Morgana and Gwen. In Melbourne. I loved this Arthur who wants not to pretend to be straight but is not so sure at times if he hasn't bitten off a bit too much with loving a Merlin who is probably just too much joy for just one person to take on. And just when I wondered if they'll make it - the story ends. After all, the author gives a fair warning at the beginning: This is an unfinished story. Considering I've drifted out of the Merlin fandom, this will never be completed. *sigh* But still, what is there is well worth reading.

At Camlann, still anonymous at the kinkmeme: Arthur as a rockstar with an artistic crisis and Merlin as a not-lover of open air festivals meet at an open air festival. Funny and hot and so true in the details of the atmosphere. And very regularly updated up to part 54. When obviously RL hit. Well, the author promises she never abandoned a work before, just has to take a little break. *sigh* (I was very astonished when I looked it up now and saw that the last update was just two months ago - feels like an eternity.)

Like a lonely house by starlingthefool: This is a sequel to the wonderful Fundamental Imperfection (which certainly everybody has read? With Arthur and Merlin as writers who meet over getting into a fight about the dreariness of Dickens at a Con...?). I never even thought a sequel could be possible... A dream come true, but not finished by a long way. *sigh*

... which I got for Christmas, taste brilliantly.
Although I wouldn't say "no" to an added hot prince on the other end.

Well, to be honest, probably I would. I'm boring like that. :)

You know this saying about early birds that catch early worms and live happily ever after because they are so diligent and useful and such? In our kitchen I have discovered the dark truth behind that saying: the worms are only there in the first place because of the birds.

Or, to be more precise: because of a bag of seeds stored for feeding the poor, fluffy birds in winter - which somehow got infested with flour moths. For days I nearly got mad with pale white caterpillars crawling across the ceiling... (Well, I should consider myself lucky they chose the ceiling, it's the only place in the flat where the usual chaos doesn't stick and so the only place crawling cohorts of caterpillars get noticed. Eventually.)

Perhaps I should open the windows and get the birds in to clear up after themselves, in a fashion... should be better than me lugging the ladder around and climbing to the topmost rung every other hour.

Since we're in South Wales at the moment (and it's beautiful!), I wasn't on babysitting duty, and the kids were so tired from a day spent digging holes at the beach (and why, o why did this wondrous occasion never happen while Merlin was still on???), we saw Atlantis.

Well, unless someone reports miraculous developments, it will be the only time. Nothing in it really interested me, neither story nor characters nor casts. It all had a definite I've seen this on Merlin and better air.

And while the producers probably deem themselves very clever because they have figured out what it is that makes the female fans go all crazy - they couldn't be more wrong. Slash is not throwing men whom I are not even remotely interested in on top of each other, nor is it gratious shirtlessness without a hint of a backstory which could make me care. (I won't even talk about the lack of pretty or chemistry.)

No, no, and no. It's the subtext that makes things interesting, not just heaps of buff (or not so buff) men-flesh shoved in my face.

(We'll have to break out the Merlin-DVDs this evening, and be it just for preparing the Grouch for our intended visit at Caerphily Castle...)

I'm not sure Dykes to watch out for was meant to be read lying in a bed shared with three persons of the male species - of which one pretends to be still asleep while the other two use me as a mountain / cave / climbing device for a game of I'm a little mysterious being and you're walking along saying la-di-da there surely are no little mysterious beings here and then you see me and ask "are you a little mysterious being?"

Still fun :)