Love In The Asylum

Things I did today rather than doing any of my actual work:

1. Took three hours to go shopping for snacks to take to my poetry class tomorrow (chocolate covered pretzels and popped potato chips, because cookies were too boring) and a belated birthday card for my grandfather. All in I think I spent a grand total of six dollars. So, you know, totally worth taking up my entire afternoon.

2. Went to hear Adam Savage give a talk at Dink. OMG THIS WAS SO AWESOME. And I almost didn't go - someone sent out an email about it just before dinner, and I was kind of meh, I've got a lot of studying to do. But then I realized that this was ADAM SAVAGE, so screw studying. My anthro midterm would still be there when I got home. By the time I got there, forty minutes before it was supposed to start, the line was already halfway to the plaza, and there were at least 100 people behind me. I guess Mythbusters is popular? WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED. And he was great - he talked about his experience with special effects engineering, and the process he and Jamie go through working on projects, and how working on the show has changed from the earlier seasons. And then he showed a video of him lighting his farts on fire and blowing up a house. So yeah. Awesome.

3. ( Making Sailor Senshi out of comic book characters: )

And now back to writing poetry and studying for my anthro midterm. Booooo.

Re: this week's Batman: The Brave and the Bold (Menace of the Conqueror):

• BOOSTER GOLD, BE MORE ADORABLE. OH WAIT YOU CAN'T.
• I have a hard time getting into this show when my characters aren't in it. Not because it isn't good, but because Batman's VA has a really flat delivery that drives me up the wall. Booster's VA, on the other hand, is quite excellent, even though that's not quite the Booster voice I hear in my head. Close though.
• Heeeeeeee security guard!Booster. He is such a cute schmoe.
• Skeets wins everything ever, as always. And I adore how much Booster loves him, even though he tries to play like he doesn't. He comes across as so young and vulnerable.
• YAY I LOVE WHEN BOOSTER IS HEROIC AND OTHER PEOPLE NOTICE.
• It makes me sad that Booster's been in two DC cartoons (three if you count his cameo in LOSH) and Ted's been in one and they still haven't been in an episode together. Woe.

Re: Due South (season 1 still):

• I bet Ray spends all the time he isn't involved in wacky hijinks with Fraser wondering how he always lets himself get talked into wacky hijinks by Fraser, and vowing never to let himself be dragged into this stuff again. And the next day, when they are chasing a gang of Canadian art smugglers through a wax museum, he remembers this vow and laughs bitterly. Because he is never going to be able to say no to Fraser, because he luuuuuurves him.
• Fraser being awkward and uncomfortable while women hit on him will never, never stop being funny.
• The episode where Diefenbaker got taken to the pound and almost put to sleep broke my heart into a MILLION TINY PIECES. I mean, bad things happening to animals always makes me go all watery-eyed because I am a soft-hearted animal lover, but god, the look on Fraser's face. It was so very much "I'm about to lose the only family I have left." *sniffles*
• Fraser playing hockey does positively pornographic things to my brain.
• Fraser's understated daddy issues fascinate me to no end.
• The Blue Line could be retitled The Time Fraser's Middle-School Crush Is A Famous Jerk Hockey Player (and then they have nostalgia sex). I'm, uh, not the only one who's picking up that vibe, right?

I'm not sure what just happened, or why I'm awake and working on this. But here, have some fluff.

Ted tastes like cheesesteak with lots of peppers.

They’re at lunch, jammed into a booth with sticky-taped fake-leather seats and kicking each other under the table, and right before Booster kisses him he swallows a huge mouthful of his sandwich. There’s a smear of grease on his chin, and something is caught in his teeth, and his breath smells strongly of onions.

It’s poor planning on Booster’s part, or rather no planning at all, because he doesn’t know he’s going to kiss Ted until his tongue is already in Ted’s mouth.  He’s never thought about kissing Ted before, and there’s nothing to make today any different than the last fifty times they’ve met up for lunch on their rare day off.

It’s just that while he is sitting in the booth drinking his milkshake and half-listening to Ted ramble about something science-y and brain-meltingly complex in between tearing into his sandwich like he’s spent the last week in a Bialyan prison, he has a moment of perfect, and jarring, clarity – he is watching Ted’s mouth.  And the color of his lips, the faint creases at the corners, the way his tongue snakes out to catch a drip of cheese, the way he grimaces and grins as he speaks, it’s all familiar to him. So he’s been watching Ted’s mouth for a while.

Ted waves a hand, sketches an abstract shape in the air and slaps emphatically at the table to drive home whatever point he’s trying to make, and that’s familiar to Booster too, like the fit of his suit or the hum of Skeets over his shoulder. So he’s been watching all of Ted for a while, maybe, and what is a guy supposed to do with knowledge like that?  

No one ever said Booster Gold was known for his calm rationality or good impulse control. And he’s never thought about kissing Ted before, but this is the first time he hasn’t thought about kissing him because he’s too busy doing it.

It’s not a great kiss. The edge of the table is digging into his stomach, and Ted’s nose gets in the way of things, and sometime soon he’s going to have to find a bathroom and brush his teeth because ew, onions.  But. There’s something to be said for Ted’s mouth. And the soft squeak he makes when Booster first leans into him. And the truly impressive things he can do with his tongue, once he gives up being shocked and starts kissing back.

When Booster finally pulls back so he can breathe for a moment, Ted blinks several times, looks suspiciously at their food, like he thinks it might be drugged – wouldn’t be the first time – looks back at him.

“What was that about?” he asks. “Did that last villain sex-pollen you? I have an all-purpose antidote back in my lab if you’ve been sex-pollened, but –”

“There’s no sex pollen!” Booster interrupts. “Besides, you were kissing me back. With tongue, even!”

“…good point. My place?”

“Mine is closer,” Booster says, relieved. He has a serious vested interest in getting Ted somewhere nice and private, where there can be more kissing.  Maybe some touching. Licking. Strategic grinding. Now that he’s thinking about it, he has plans.

“But hey,” he adds which Ted is signaling the waitress, trying not to look like he’s about to spring out of his seat so he can go home and make out with a hot blond. “Can we stop at the drugstore first, so I can buy you an extra toothbrush?”

Crossposted to boostle : this was my fiction exercise from last week. We were working on dialogue - how to make it believable and natural, and how to add subtext so you can reveal plot with exposition-dumping. Premise was: write about two characters who are arguing about chores, but actually breaking up. I'm the only comics geek in the class, so I figured I could get away with writing Booster/Ted hijinks. Set sometime suring the JLI - I guess around when Booster left to form the Conglomerate?

 

( Read more... )

 

I choose to assume this ends with make-up sex :D

For our writing exercise today I wrote a very messy but hopefully interesting story about the first time I visited my father in jail. Will maybe post in a few days, I don't know, it needs a lot of work. Am now going back to not doing what I should be doing, which is any number of th

Um.

I think the incessant rain has infected me with some kind of horrible Californian fungus that is ROTTING MY BRAIN.

I woke up this morning with a disturbingly full-formed plot outline in my head that I will never write, ever, because it is horrible and cliched and WTF and FAIL, just FAIL. But now I can't stop thinking about it!

Basically, it involves Booster getting a sample of Ted's DNA (either off the googles he still has on a dresser somewhere, or by going back in time and, ahem, sampling), and rather than doing the sensible thing, which would be cloning, he decides to go to the future and get himself knocked up with Ted's sciencey love child. Because they can totally do that in the future. Mmm-hmm. And then he has to hide his pregnancy from the news and the rest of the superhero community, and Michelle would find out and be all grrrrrr protective after she got over the 'what the hell Michael, are you brain-damaged?'.  I don't even know how weird things would get with Rip - I mean, how do you tell your mentor/handler that you're pregnant with, uh, him?

What the hell is wrong with me? Dear self: DO NOT WRITE THIS.

I'm going to end up trying to write this, aren't I?

Could today have been any more of a Monday? Seriously, universe, you don't need to try this hard!

*is dead*

I was up way late AND way early, trying to get my second CS assignment in on time (I did not succeed). I got very frustrated with my professor because one of the problems told us we had to use a method that a) he never explained, and b) wasn't in the book. WTF? On the other hand. My roommate noticed how stressed I was and made a suggestion that, after some talk with telyanofcelore , I decided to go through on: I switched my CS class to credit/no credit instead of being for a grade. I mean, it's not a class I need. I already earned my engineering GER from 105 last quarter, and this isn't even tangentially related to my major. It's just a class I'm taking because I kind of enjoy programming, because I thought it would be useful in the future to have at least a basic understanding of it, and because I want to make sure the math/science/analytic thinky parts of my brain don't get all withered and dead-ish while I'm writing papers about imperial sysmbolism in 19th century lit. Basically, I wanted this to be a challenging but still fun class, and it's just stressing me out way too much already. Hopefully this will take some of the weight off, so I can get back to stressing about classes that actually have to do with my degree!

Fiction class was...intense.

I'll lay this out here: I'm not comfortable talking about myself to people. Those of you who have met me in real life are laughing now, I'm sure, because I'm always telling crazy stories about my family and stuff. But it's true. What it is - I talked for quite a while with my mom about this today - is that I only share things about myself when I feel very much in control of how I'm sharing it. That's one of the reasons I tell so many stories about my family (also because they are fucking funny) - it puts things on my terms. If I present things as a joke, if I can make you laugh, then I know that you are seeing things the way I want you to.

I don't like looking weak in front of other people. I hate crying in public. I'd rather you be pissed off at me than feel sorry for me. I just can't deal with that. So I deflect with humor. I turn everything into a joke. You aren't allowed to feel sorry for me because I don't feel sorry for me.

So with a story like the one I wrote this weekend, I'm in a very uncomfortable place. I can't make this funny. I can't laugh it off. Who I am, whether or not that is a good thing, is on display in that story, and just reading it, knowing anyone who reads it will know a part of me in a way that I cannot control, makes me feel really exposed and vulnerable. It's scary.

But I still got up in class today and read that story to a roomful of students, and I'm glad I did. But damn, I was fucking drained after I got out of class.

Bright side: my teacher praised my story pretty strongly. She said it had great pacing and a really strong voice. And I'm pretty satisfied with it, too, which doesn't happen that often for me. It was a good piece of writing, if very, very painful.

To make up for it, I wrote this during our beginning of class free write. It is not a visceral, deeply personal piece of writing. But it does have a stripper cake!

( prompt was: a good deed goes badly awry )

I hate Thursdays. And I may need to kill my roommate. Today would have been a much better day if I weren't fuck-all tired because she invited boyfriend over for a study session at 1.30 in the morning. GAH HATE HATE HATE.

Work was productive. In the sense of I wrote a lot of fanfiction in between harrassing alumni for money. I started a new story. It is de-aging fic! I...am sorry, I am so sorry. It just sort of happened, I swear.

“Okay, let’s run through this one more time,” Max said. “And with a few more details than ‘exploding magical doodad, please.” He leaned back wearily in his chair, rubbing at his temples. He could already feel a headache coming on – not that that was unusual where Beetle and Booster were concerned.

“I don’t have more details,” Ted exclaimed. “I already told you what happened. Twice! You said there was a supervillain attacking a shopping mall. We went and beat him up – he was a lightweight, by the way, Mary could have taken him with one hand behind her back. And then –”

In retrospect, it was at least partly his fault. He should have known better than to assume Booster had the sense not to touch the amulet ‘Doctor Mesmero’ had been threatening the shoppers with, and he definitely should have known better than to take his eye off Booster, when he’d demonstrated time and again he had all the responsibility and impulse control of a retarded Labrador.

But Ralph had been in the parking lot handing the would-be thief over to the cops, and Mary and Bea had been on crowd control, which left him to get the irate mall owner to stop shouting so Ted could give him all the Supperbuddies’ legal forms. He’d been right on the verge of getting the guy to sign off when Booster had called his name.

“Hey Ted, what do you think this actually does?” He’d called across the arcade.

“Booster, don’t—”Ted had shouted, but it was too late – Booster had already knelt to pick the amulet up, and the second he touched it, there was a blinding flash of light and he was engulfed in thick, acrid smoke.

“ – and when the smoke cleared, he looked like this,” Ted finished. He scowled at the occupant of the seat next to him. “Booster, stop fidgeting.”

“My name is Michael,” a petulant voice answered him. “Stop calling me that. And I don’t wanna sit still. This is boring.”

Even if Ted suspected Booster’s lower lip of protruding a bit more than strictly necessary, it was hard not to be softened by the sullen misery on the small face. Ted sighed.

“Max, we don’t really need him to stick around, do we? You’ve had your chance to look him over, and it’s not like he can tell you anything I can’t.”

“Fine, fine,” Max replied. “He’s just a distraction anyway.”

“You heard the man, Mikey, get your butt outta here. Go – I don’t know, find Sue and see if she’ll play with you.”

Booster, to his credit, didn’t stick around to see if his release would be rescinded; he clambered out of his chair and hit the ground running, Ted’s oversized shirt slipping off one shoulder.

“So he’s really…?”

“A five-year-old?” Ted said. “Seems like. The physical change is pretty obvious, even if we haven’t done any tests yet. Mentally…I’m not sure. This isn’t exactly my field of expertise. I mean, he’s still Booster. And he recognizes me, at least a little, and he’s not asking where his mom and his sister are and why he’s not in the 25^th Century, so he probably remembers something. But how much, or how well, or if he understands any of it – I’ve got no idea. But as far as, as language, and processing ability, and maturity go, he’s a little kid.”

“So he hasn’t changed, then.”

“Max, this is serious!”

Max rolled his eyes. “Like that’s ever stopped you before. How long is it going to last?”

Ted shook his head. “I called in a few favors and got Oracle to see what she could dredge up, but she couldn’t find anything. We can try to get a magic user in here, but other than that – it could wear off tomorrow. Or it could be permanent.”

Max watched Ted for several long moments, and finally shoved his chair away from the desk and stood.

“You are taking this too seriously,” he said, clapping Ted on the shoulder. “You should be used to this kind of thing by now – heck, didn’t the entire Justice League get age-zapped a while back? Booster will be fine. And sitting around here and moping won’t fix him any faster. Go home, Ted.”

Max managed to wait until ted was out of the room before he gave into his urge to beat his head against the wall.

And then Ted uses him to pick up chicks. Yes. I will finish this...not tonight, because I have a metric ton of coding to do *grimaces*, but soon! I hope. I want to get to the cuddling.

But I can't work on NaNo at work, and this...just sort of happened.

Shel Carter is Booster's sister who was dead and now is not because of time travel. This is moderately Boostle-y. Duh.




It’s not like Michelle is trying to eavesdrop.  What she’s trying to do is find her brother, because they’ve got a however-brief lull in things to fix in the time stream and Rip said they could go for ice cream. But approaching his room, she hears the soft murmur of speech and – call it sisterly instinct – she hangs back at the door, just out of sight, in hope of overhearing something she can tease him about later.

“—so then I had to ditch the Batsuit and disguise myself as Elvis. Man, I wish you could have seen it – I made that pantsuit hot. Even white polyester can’t take away from this ass,” Booster snickers.  There’s no answer, she can’t hear another person moving or even breathing, just the faint creak of the mattress shifting under her brother, and she supposes he must be talking on the phone.

But when she moves a little closer, so she can see through the narrow crack of the door – she’s a Carter, manners and morals are always going to take second seat to curiosity – there’s no phone in sight. Just Booster, sitting cross-legged on the bed and talking earnestly to his bedside table.  Which is just a little worrying – Rip has a whole list in the kitchen of signs of mind control or incipient supervillainy, and talking to empty space is right up at the top, just under abusing the black hair dye and growing a goatee—until the blue plasticky corner of a frame catches her eye, and she realizes her brother is in fact talking to a photograph.

“You’d have been proud of me, though,” Booster says, and there’s a little catch in his voice now, none of the casual cheerfulness of before. “Well, actually, you’d have cracked up over me almost getting shot by a crazy old guy and driving the Batmobile dressed like Elvis, Mister Mature, but I’d have known you were anyway.  If you could have been there—”

Michelle bangs on the door loudly, like she hasn’t been standing there for the last five minutes, and Booster jerks and spills to the floor in a swearing heap. If, in the ensuing attempt to detangle his limbs, she catches him take a swipe at his eyes to brush off a glittering dampness, she doesn’t mention it.  

But later, when Booster is watching some sports event in the living room with Rip and Skeets, she quietly excuses herself and sneaks back into his room to see whose picture her brother had been all teary-eyed over, since as his sister it’s her right to know this kind of thing.

She recognizes her brother, of course, though Booster’s a few years younger and wearing the most abominably hideous shirt she’s ever seen, but she doesn’t recognize the other man. He’s a short brunet, an athlete’s body but a little bit of a paunch, and he’s grinning broadly, one arm slung companionably across her brother’s shoulders.  There’s sand behind them, and palm trees, and they both look ridiculously happy with themselves.

It’s easy to forget that there are years between her and her brother now, all that time she just skipped right over between that fight that almost (did) kill her and when she saw him in Rip’s bunker.  And then something like this happens and – it drives her crazy, that she doesn’t know when Booster had this picture taken, or who the brown-haired guy is, and why her brother looks so happy to be with him, or what happened to her brother that he’s having conversations with a photograph. She can guess, from what Booster’s told her about the last few years, about Ted, but it’s not the same as knowing, as having been there for him.

Michelle doesn’t like realizing that she doesn’t really know her brother anymore.

Yay, I don't have to work tomorrow - it's my week to work the Saturday shift (OMG EW 7.30 KILL ME NOW) so I have Friday off. And I am so relieved - it has been such a - not bad, but very draining? - week that I don't think I could manage another shift without a day off. *is a total wimp*
On Monday I took /90/ calls in /8/ hours, which is just absolutely and completely insane. Seriously. Normally even on the really busy days when we're getting nonstop calls I only average about 70. /41/ retention calls. Again, on a normal day? My average is about 14. This was A FUCKING CRAZY DAY. I hate the Bank of America so much for introducing two major price jackings within about a week of each other. Not good business sense, guys! This week was also the first time I've ever had someone threaten to sue me. It was kind of awesome. But I made it through the week, and I'm giving my two weeks' notice on Tues when I get back to work if I can figure out how. I feel so bad about it; I guess I just really hate quitting jobs, since I had the same guilty, anxious attitude toward quitting the movie theater job and that I hated with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. But I will do it! Somehow!

This is certainly not news to anyone, but I am a tremendous geek. XD I had this solidly reaffirmed today, when I realized that I am seriously considering calling in sick from work so that I can listen to a Torchwood radio drama and make sure the CERN people don't blow up the world accidently. But honestly, can you blame me? Jack+giant particle accelerators=HOT. SO HOT. 

The fact that I am about 550 pages into Anna Karenina, which I have been reading entirely of my own free will, does not help me shake the geek hat. It's lucky I like the hat. And the book. Which is odd, since it's the sort of book I normally loathe, being all concerned as it with the sundry love affairs of Russian aristrocrats. But it's actually rather fabulous - Tolstoy's writing, for one thing, since the man was /brilliant/, and the way he works so many bits and bobs about Russian history and politics ans culture and religion and philosophy into it. And all the characters are strangely sympathetic. Normally by this point in a "classic" I'm beating my head against the wall shouting "how can you all be this stupid?!?!" but in AK, even though everyone's making frightfully bad choices I can understand why that would seem the only choice to them. It's a nice, if disconcerting, chance to like a classic for once.


( Excerpt from the alternate-universe!Ted Boostle fic I may post if I can think of an ending )