L'opera, mi amore!

alexseanchai is doing a one-card draw where you can ask for a reading or leave a five-word prompt and get a STORY.

Check it out.

Several things, really, including three sweaters' worth of yarn. But the most important?

A husband.

Best New Year's Eve ever.

I grabbed one, because it seemed like fun.

I'm open for suggestions/recommendations/requests.

No, I am not doing Story A Day. I hate challenges and I always fail at them anyway. Not committing to anything.

It's PURELY COINCIDENCE that there is a new story from me up in commonplace and that it happens to be the first of May.

Purely.

Really, guys, come on.

... I prefer sam_storyteller.

Tony Stark/Loki, Avengers movieverse, relevant to my interests, also worth reading. GO NOW.

You're welcome.

...you'll have to click the link. Also: a giant eating nuns.

Look at me, all not being dead and stuff!

I have just completed working TEN DAYS IN A ROW, which seems like it should be a violation of some kind of law, but is not because of the way corporations get to define the start and end of a week. So, yeah, eighty hours, no overtime. FAIL.

Because of that, and because my job is a soul-sucking thing that leaves me not wanting to talk to ANYONE EVER at the end of the day, I have spent very little time actually interacting with the internets, and indeed have considered taking a break from reading my dreamwidth at all, because mostly it makes me stressed out.

So consider this an apology for my lack of communication with the world at large.

If there's anything you think I really need to know, please leave me a comment which I will then not respond to or send me a PM which I probably won't respond to either. Or send me a text which I will probably ignore. Except that now I get TWO WHOLE DAYS off that I will probably not spend online.

Really, if you want a response from me... you're better off messaging finch.

Sorry, guys.

Happy Thanksgiving, anyway.

So I'm wandering around my network, right, and ONE OF YOU is part of a community called fic_promptly. I'm looking at you. Yes, you. This is your fault.

I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE BUT I BLAME YOU ANYWAY.

Anyway, so the challenge is Dialogue/No Dialogue, where the prompt is a line of dialogue but the fill shouldn't have any dialogue. Does that make sense? It's midnight, idk. You can look at it here.

So somebody prompted, Marvel Comics, Tony Stark/Any, "Come fly with me."

AND THEN THIS HAPPENED.

Pepper. Tony. 159 words.

He'd invited her to fly with him dozens of times by this point, until it almost had become a running joke that she wouldn't. It wasn't that she was frightened, so much, as she thought that being completely at Tony's mercy more than five feet off the ground sounded like a terrible idea. Too many variables. What if he dropped her, or crushed her, or... no. She didn't trust him enough, and she trusted Iron Man even less. Plus there was that guy she'd dated in college who'd dissected how many different ways the Superman-flying-with-Lois-Lane scene in the original movie wouldn't work.

No, there would be no flying anywhere with Tony Stark, or Iron Man, drunk or sober.

Which, of course, explained why she was wrapped in his arms half a mile up and seriously wishing she'd worn a heavier coat.

It was Tony, after all, and she'd never been any good at telling him no for very long.

--

And then THIS HAPPENED TOO.

Steve. Tony. Technically it's cheating because all I know is the movie. IDEK REALLY PEOPLE. 228 VERY SNEAKY WORDS.

He tilted his head and smirked, and Steve thought about fondue, and was every Stark this complicated? Tony must've inherited it from his father, along with the company - this merry, mercurial streak that Steve couldn't quite put his finger on. Maybe flying was a metaphor for something else. It seemed to Steve that everything was a metaphor for something else, an eternal game of that's what she said, whatever that even meant. Half the time he felt two steps behind, but when Tony Stark walked into the room, it was closer to a dozen. Tony wanted Steve to fly with him, and Steve couldn't fly, which meant... what, exactly? Not the way he'd flown with the senior Stark, a rattletrap plane on a one-way mission to hell. No, not that at all. He meant - with him, pressed against Iron Man's side, breathing air like icicles in his lungs, but so damned good anyway, and he could barely think, this high up, this close to Tony. He didn't know what to think about that, either; he didn't even quite understand it. Another complication in a complicated world. Maybe it was his eyes. Tony had his mother's eyes, dark and alluring, wide and wicked and full of an invitation that Steve wanted to answer even if he didn't know how. Even if he didn't know what it meant.

--

WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN.

finch found this while cleaning last night. I'm not entirely sure what inspired this essay, beyond the likelihood I was trying to understand the Marxist philosophy of language. I fail to grasp the "universal theory of everything" school of thought, because, really, humans are more subtle than that? But, you know, whatever gets your paper written. Also, lingustics are not really my bag, and the only reason I survived the class was because the teacher was super-passionate about his topic. I prefer language all stitched together into paragraphs and essays and novels, not dissected into phonemes and so on.

So, here you are: the Marxist philosophy of language, as explained by Keanu Reeves and written by me in red felt pen.

Dude, every idea means something, right? It's, like, totally a sign. And signs are all, like, "Whoa, stop!" or "Do not enter, dude!"

Then there's stuff. And stuff, it doesn't have a meaning, right? Except some dudes could totally turn a picture of some stuff into a new sign. So, like, a picture of Redondo Beach could totally mean, "Surf's up!" But Redondo wouldn't mean that; it'd still be just a beach.

But, dude, when you make stuff up, it totally means something! But, like, stuff doesn't really come out of your head all shiny and new. It totally comes from everything around you, like new episodes of CSI and going to the mall, and chilling with the dudes. But there's not really a place in your head at all. You only think stuff once you've been hanging out with people long enough.

Some dudes think that thoughts come from this fuzzy spot in your brain, but those dudes are totally whacked. You can't think of stuff without your dudes around. If you hang around with the same dudes long enough, it's like you kinda got your own language. You can be all, "Dude!" and your bud'll be like, "Dude!" and you can be, like, "Whoa." And you totally know what he means.

But you know what's totally the shit when it comes to meaning shit? Words. Yeah, dude, words totally can mean anything you want them to. Words aren't like pictures, but you totally can't talk about things without words.

And that's way cool.

My ex was a huge BPAL fiend. Huge. Now, I really like BPAL too, but not nearly to the degree that she did. But I had a good-sized collection of imps, as you do, all living cozily in a drawer in my armoire. My armoire which I had to clean out, because we sold it. You see where this is going, right?

I can't look at this pile of imps without thinking about her, which means I am never going to use any of them. I can't even put on my favorite BPAL scent, which I have a bottle of, without getting upset. I considered throwing them out, but it seems like a tremendous waste, so I have determined to find them new homes, and you folks get first crack, because I love you all.

Imps, for those of you who are not BPAL-savvy, are 1/32 ounce - tester size, but you use a small enough amount that, if you wore it every day, an imp would last between 4-6 weeks. It's certainly enough to determine whether you want the full-sized bottle, and they're fantastic if you aren't the type who wants to wear the same perfume every day.

(I am also the type of girl who has a signature scent, which means that most of these imps are completely unused, and many of them have never even been opened to be sniffed.)

( List of available scents, prices, etc. )