Love In The Asylum

I think I have been listening to too much Voltaire this week (is there such a thing as too much Voltaire?). I can't get Zombie Prostitute out of my head, and that's the kind of song people look at you for when you start singing while you are walking in the quad. And I can't stop thinking about Goodnight Demonslayer, which on its own is fairly adorable, but when my head puts it together with tiny!SamnDean, suddenly becomes kind of heart-breaking.

Anyway, it's Tuesday, and that means Int Fiction, and that means I have writing to share!

 

( the one about wanting to kill your boss )

 

 

( the one where Fox is a creepy stalker )

 

( Five People That Mara Took Home With Her )

I spent the entire afternoon playing phonetag, trying to get any one of a half-dozen people to talk to me to distract me from terminal boredom while waiting for the bus/bus-sickness once the bus finally came. How dare everyone I know have lives that include plans on a Saturday afternoon that aren't talking to me! *huffs*

The evening was devoted to watching the White House Correspondents' Dinner on C-SPAN, because I am a gigantic dork. But, but, you guys, my president! He is so awesome! And adorable! And funny! And he made jokes about Michael Steele, and Rush Limbaugh, and people pissing on poor Timmy! And a joke about gay-marrying Axelrod OMG HOW IS THIS MAN THE PRESIDENT I LOVE HIM SO FUCKING MUCH.

(Also Wanda Sykes was brilliantly fabulous and I want to marry her in Iowa. I could not stop cracking up all through her bit about Michelle's sleeves, and Faux News' blow-up tomorrow about her calling Limbaugh treasonous and how Keith should waterboard Hannity is going to be beautiful to behold)

I've been writing a little. On occasion. When I'm not distracted by shiny things like the President. Aside from all my non-finished yet fanfics, I'm (theoretically) working on a bunch of Five Things stories for The Big Damn Superhero Novel - it's a good way of getting a grip on my characters and their backstories, and adding to my lists of Things What Happen In The Novel.

From the Jake/Shane list (Five Times Jake and Shane Held Hands): the first time Jake meets Shane, he's a stranger in a mask, asking him to join a team.

“So you’ll do it?” Shield asks, and Jake likes to believe there’s a trace of a hopeful waver under that infernally calm and even tone.

“I’ll think about it,” he growls. It’s a lie. He’ll give it a few days maybe, but his mind was made up before Shield spoke. If the man had asked him to jump out a twentieth-story window, his boots would be scraping the windowsill before he had second thoughts. But he can’t say that.

Shield holds out a gold-gloved hand for him to shake, and Jake ignores the momentary impulse to refuse it, just to see that steady smile fade. Even through two layers of thick, stubbly leather, he can feel the heat of Shield’s skin, all the energy pulsing through his veins. His grip is measured tight, his handshake is firm, and Jake can’t resist holding it a beat too long.

“I will see you again,” Shield says, and steps backward off the rooftop.

Jake stands still as a shadow, studying the scrap of paper left in his hand. It refuses to give him any answers – just a date, an address across town, and the scrawled words ‘meet me here.’ He does not think about the lingering warmth clinging to the black leather where his hand touched Shield’s.

Three blocks away a siren wails to life, and the Watchman hears it.

Two excerpts from a conversation with Telyanofcelore:

On Firefly ships:

masterofmidgets: Simon/Inara? That would be...so polite
Telyanofcelore: Amarantha Ed-san Inara/Jayne? Um...
masterofmidgets: the most demure sex scenes imaginable
masterofmidgets: oh god, Inara/Jayne with really Dom Inara would be win
Telyanofcelore: It would have to have really Dom Inara.
Telyanofcelore: I... have trouble imagining a scenario in which this comes about, though
masterofmidgets: lost bet?
Telyanofcelore: OH GOD
Telyanofcelore: I can see it - they're really, really bored. So they decide to play a game. The first two people to lose have to sleep with each other unless it's Zoe and Wash because Zoe is scary.
Telyanofcelore: Jayne says he ain't playing no gorram game
Telyanofcelore: He forfeits, to his dismay
Telyanofcelore: Everyone, after that, plays very, very carefully
Telyanofcelore: Inara loses. She raises an eyebrow, turns to Jayne, and Mal just about blows a gasket
Telyanofcelore: But also 'Hmm, this might not be so bad after all if I give him proper instructions'
masterofmidgets: afterwards they never talk about it again
Telyanofcelore: Kaylee naturally wants to watch. Simon is horrified. Mal is sulking.
Telyanofcelore: Zoe and Wash are pretending this isn't happening, and ignore it. River is crazy.
Telyanofcelore: Book lectures on sins, and is very glad he doesn't have to sleep with Jayne
Telyanofcelore: ...did River or Kaylee suggest the game?
masterofmidgets: Kaylee, definitely
masterofmidgets: although she honestly suspected that no one would take her up on it
masterofmidgets: possibly they are all /very/ drunk
masterofmidgets: they are obviously on a very long, very dull shipping job where no one is even trying to kill them
Telyanofcelore: yes
Telyanofcelore: No one is trying to kill them, they have enough supplies and spare parts, it's nowhere near that day Mal hates, the ship is clean, there are no stowaways or officials, there's no one to trick, and their cargo is fertilizer
Telyanofcelore: They've run out of music to play, they have no more books on file, they're tired of playing aerobic games in the hold, there's nothing interesting that can be cooked, and they have a plan laid out for their next venture
Telyanofcelore: Wash's dinosaurs have run out of ideas.
masterofmidgets: sex is the only option

On Jamie/Fox in the Jake-and-Shane verse

masterofmidgets: Jamie is probably the healthiest person in the entire group
Telyanofcelore: And you said that Jamie calmly opened a vein so he could draw a weapon and get them out of there
Telyanofcelore: I think that's hardly healthy
masterofmidgets: in a relative sense, he's healthier than the rest of them, but compared to the rest of us...he's still a bit mental
Telyanofcelore: He also has a passion for mythology and slept with a fox demon
Telyanofcelore: Who stalks him
Telyanofcelore: Only a /little/ mental
Telyanofcelore: So where is Fox?
masterofmidgets: Fox is the Ex-Boyfriend Who Still Calls All the Time
Telyanofcelore: If you tell him no once, he'll never leave you alone.
masterofmidgets: so yeah, I think Fox is the ex who shows up and hangs out and eats your food and you can't get rid of him, and then you sleep with him even though you know it's a terrible idea, and then he leaves and you wish he would call you
Telyanofcelore: And he does, but you both never quite manage to make this occasional sleeping-together thing turn back into a relationship, not that you think it's a good idea but at least it would be /definite/
masterofmidgets: which isn't entirely a bad thing because deep down you know they are utterly unsuited for a relationship, but the sex is really good and you just can't quite get over them, not to mention things are always more exciting when they show up
Telyanofcelore: And so it kind of is a relationship because it's not like you're seeing anyone else but it's really really weird and surely occasional sex and hanging out isn't a relationship? But...

WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?

More from the non-existent Jake/Shane novel. Set just after Shane gets killed by supervillain whose name I can't remember right now. Angst.

The days after the train wreck, time slows down to the speed of dripping molasses. Jake knows; his entire career as a superhero has been about bending time to his will, and just because this doesn’t seem to be under his control doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Jake knows; time just isn’t flowing properly from one second to the next anymore.

It’s the only logical explanation for why Jake keeps finding himself in rooms with no recollection of how he’d gotten there. He sits for a minute to study a photograph of them from their first press conference, and when he stands again it’s nightfall. He stops in his steps, startled and gaping, when he passes a café where they’d had after-patrol coffee, and a passer-by has to shove him out of the way because of the traffic built up behind him.

The nights stretch out, long and aching and endless, and as he watches the clock tick over, Jake knows the minutes never lasted this long before.

 And it figures, it just fucking figures; Shane had to go and ruin everything else in Jake’s life when he went and got himself killed. That second when Jamie couldn’t hold him back any longer, when he’d seen him – Shane laid out, god, like a hero, trickle of blood on his chin, suit in shreds, and so fucking still, still as death – everything had shattered, he’d felt it in that second that had never seemed to end.

And now he can’t make time work like it used to. It’s broken, Jake knows; and it’s all Shane’s fault.  

So the Jake and Shane superhero novel is slooooooooowly starting to take shape in my head. It'll be awhile before I do any writing on it, I think, but I am getting there! Right now I'm mostly working on fleshing out the main characters; since this is a superhero novel, I need at least vague ideas of their powers, origins, costumes, etc! And a lot of random characterization bits like family history, jobs, that sort of thing. A few things I've figured out so far:

I don't think I'm going to make Jake an alcoholic, at least not before Shane's death (and probably not after). I'd toyed around with it a bit - it's /such/ a jaded, angry cop thing to do, but I don't think it really works for him, either because his self-control is too tight (a problem in and of itself), or because he channels that self-destruct urge into other directions (possibly into violence against the criminals he fights, which is Not Good). There will probably be a side character who is an acoholic, though, because one of the major themes of this story is Superheroes Are Fucked-Up.

Shane's power is going to be something based on force manipulation - i.e. he can generate and manipulate force fields, which he can use defensively (as a shield, duh), or offensively (on the hammer principle). He can also use them to fly by projecting a steady downward force. Because I say I want one of my boys to fly. This power is pretty strongly linked to one of the major characterization points I've got for Shane - basically that he is a very defensive, closed-off person. He is nice to everyone, everyone likes him, he has great faith in people, but he never gets close to them, always keeps him at a distance. I think the idea behind this is that he is a very idealistic person who got very badly hurt, and has decided he'd rather stay idealistic and just shut himself off a bit, rather than getting close to people and risk getting hurt again.

Jake's powers are looking to be some sort of time dilation thing - essentially the inversion of superspeed, I guess? He has the ability to stretch out a moment of time, so that he can move around in it while everyone else is frozen. This has enough variability to be tactically useful, I think; he can time-freeze ass-kick, he can use it to be several places in a short amount of time, he can use it to do things without being seen, etc. He can also bring someone in with him, as long as he is touching them when he does. But it's a limited power - he can't do it for very long periods of time, since time does not like to be going at different speeds in different places, and the longer he does it the harder it gets - when another person is involved, the difficulty is tremendous - and when it snaps back into place, the backlash is horribly painful. So that's good. And it provides extra-angst for the dead!Shane bit, and the potential for time-dilated kissing/sex. Yay!

In related but less relevant news, I realized that Jake is to all effects and purposes Sam Vimes. In the alternate universe where Things Went Badly. Conclude from that what you will.

ETA: I'm pretty sure Jake's superhero name is going to be The Watchman. I AM A HORRIBLE PERSON, OKAY?