potentialities

Wednesday reading — theatre and other roleplaying

2014-07-17T01:59:19Z

What I've been reading

I read Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics, because when I set about geeking out about a subject I like to be thorough.

I read The Voyeurs, which is one possible answer to the question how introverted and socially awkward can you be and still draw a compelling autobiographical comic? which, as an introverted and socially-awkward person, drew me in. Amusingly, her boyfriend during the first part of the period of time covered by this book was some French director named Michel who was working on some short films and stuff, and it wasn't until much later when she mentioned him leaving to make The Green Hornet that I realized oh, wait, that's Michel Gondry. (I am the only person I know who loved that stupid movie.)

I read March: Book One, the first volume of John Lewis's graphic autobiography, and it's really great.

I read Venus in Fur, the play by David Ives. Or rather, I was watching this bootleg recording of Venus in Fur, because I'd seen the gifs of Hugh Dancy on tumblr, and I was having trouble making out the dialogue at times, which is a problem in a talky play, but then I found this PDF of the script that maybe isn't supposed to be public but Google totally found it and that let me follow along. It's a meta play about a playwright who's written an adaptation of Sacher-Masoch's book and an actress who shows up to audition for it. I found it really smart and sexy, the smartness totally enhancing the sexiness for me.

I was then, for obvious reasons, inspired to reread Venus in Furs, and was honestly surprised by how funny I found it. For an absurdly masturbatory fantasy, it's oddly realistic about how tiresome and ultimately unsatisfying it might be to fulfill some dude's incredibly demanding 24/7 lifestyle. I think my favorite part though is how Aurora Rümelin was inspired by reading it to pursue a Venus in Furs-type relationship with the author, only to eventually write her own memoir about how tiresome and ultimately unsatisfying it was. Ahahahaha whoops. I'd really like to get ahold of that book sometime, because it sounds fascinating.

I also reread David Ives's classic collection of short plays, All in the Timing. Back in high school I assistant directed a production of three of them for class and it was awesome, even though we had to edit some of them for language ("You brought me into your freaking Philadelphia!").

I read, for the first time, another of David Ives's collections of short plays, Lives of the Saints. I was particularly taken by the one about the Maytag man who's in a relationship with a washing machine.

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on the first day of Yuletide…

2013-12-26T04:21:19Z

I got two Cassel/Lila Curse Workers fics this year and they are both absolutely amazing. I am so, so, so lucky. ♥

our kiss is a secret handshake (1934 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Curse Workers Series - Holly Black
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Cassel Sharpe/Lila Zacharov
Characters: Cassel Sharpe, Lila Zacharov
Summary:

Even though Lila is undeniably, indisputably, unequivocally in control, she still looks at him with a faintly nervous expression, as if she’s afraid he’s going to change his mind.

Three Predicaments (3785 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Curse Workers Series - Holly Black
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Relationships: Cassel Sharpe/Lila Zacharov
Characters: Cassel Sharpe, Lila Zacharov
Additional Tags: BDSM, D/s, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Piercings, Predicament Scenes, Kink, Dream Work
Summary:

Lila made the amulet against dream work for me a few weeks back, but not for my protection. She made it so that when I take it off, we both know she can work me.

Everyone should read them. Unless you haven't read the Curse Workers books, in which case you should do that first. But I imagine that you wouldn't be able to get around to that for a while, the holidays being what they are, so I understand.

Today ended up being really busy, so I haven't gotten a chance to read or comment very widely beyond my own gifts. Looking forward to getting a start on that tomorrow. *falls over*

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Friday fics — some smut

2013-09-20T14:06:57Z

Weekly Arrest (1684 words) by Incidental_Villainess
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Korra/Lin Bei Fong
Characters: Korra (Avatar), Lin Bei Fong
Summary:

PWP. The request was: "Lin/Korra, kinky interrogation room anal." There's also some bondage. That pretty much sums it up.

Some cheeky, fun porn that does the best job of capturing the Lin/Korra dynamic I was looking for. I'm going to be so sad if Lin Bei Fong doesn't turn up in this series of Legend of Korra, being all bitter and competent and hot.

You've Hungered For This All Your Life (7357 words) by karelian [archive-locked]
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: Australian Actor RPF, Actor RPF, X-Men RPF, Les Misérables RPF
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Russell Crowe/Hugh Jackman
Characters: Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Paul Bettany, Alan Doyle, Mentions of Gratuitous Celebrities, Various Spouses
Additional Tags: Dirty Talk, Blow Jobs, Fucking, Open Relationships, Falling In Love, Submission, Polyamory, Open Marriage, Light Bondage, Spanking, Rimming, Music, Sexual Fantasy
Summary:

Hugh makes Russell scream. Russell makes Hugh understand why people do things that always seemed crazy to him before -- tattooing their lovers' names on their cocks, drinking their lovers' blood.

Delicious getting-together-during-Les-Mis sex with gloriously subby Russell.

In the Jungle (3707 words) by karelian [archive-locked]
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Australian Actor RPF, X-Men RPF, Les Misérables RPF, Actor RPF
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Russell Crowe/Hugh Jackman
Characters: Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman
Additional Tags: Watersports, Mutual Masturbation, Sharing Clothes, Clothed Sex, Open Relationships, understanding spouses, Celebrity Crush, Wet & Messy
Summary:

Hugh has some boundaries. Russell, not so much.

Nnnnngh. I'm not even into watersports qua watersports, but I totally kink on the characters' kinkiness.

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Into Darkerness

2013-09-16T17:19:32Z

Sometimes I feel as though I'm not properly in a fandom until I have discovered the pairing of my heart that virtually no one ships but me. Not that I don't want other people to ship these pairings, it just seems to be a thing that happens to me, repeatedly, and I complain and tag-stalk and yearn for them.

I was rewatching Star Trek Into Darkness with my mom, who loved the first one but played Words with Friends through some of the bits she found rather boring in this one, which is fair enough. (I was playing words back to her, but then, I'd actually seen it before!) And, like, there's a whole genre of post-STID dark AU fic where the bad guys win and there's sex slavery and all the other requisite id-y goodness, but the thing is, it's all predicated on the Khan being the one who takes over and debauches the crew of the Enterprise. Which is all very well and good and whatever, but there's a character in this movie who is much better positioned to do such a thing, whom Kirk actually offers himself up in order to protect his crew to in a scene so mind-meltingly hot that I was almost embarrassed to be watching it in a theatre, and nobody is writing the AU where Admiral Marcus keeps Kirk as a sex slave. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

(I mean, I realize that the answer to this question is: Benedict Cumberbatch. But since what I enjoyed most about Cumberkhan was all the bits where he similarly suffered bad things happening to himself, and very prettily I might add, in order to protect his crew, I would also prefer to read about him in an Admiral Marcus's Dystopian Starfleet AU. Alas.)

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formations of fantasy

2013-09-10T02:43:19Z

Don't you love it when you come across a piece of jargon or term of art that expresses something you had wanted to say with grace and concision?¹

I was reading Amy Richlin's chapter on reading Ovid's rapes in the collection of essays that she edited on Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, where she alludes to "the model of fantasy derived from psychoanalytic theory, in which the subject oscillates among the terms of the fantasy" and instantly I thought yes, that, precisely!

I put in yet another interlibrary loan request for the work cited in case I found anything else interesting in there, but just that single phrase is perfect to me.

¹And, relatedly, can you suggest a more elegant way to put that? *g*

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no but seriously

2013-09-05T23:16:56Z

I genuinely need Tom Hiddleston/Cookie Monster delayed gratification kinkfic. Am I going to have to nominate this for Yuletide? Can I nominate Tom Hiddleston under Sesame Street, or do I have to nominate this segment as its own fandom with Tom Hiddleston and Cookie Monster as characters? So many questions.

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FIC: Like Juno's Swans (Celia/Rosalind, R)

2013-08-09T04:00:56Z

This is my first story for my kink bingo card, for "writing on the body", and that isn't even on any of the lines I was going to do, so I guess it's my free space.

Like Juno's Swans by mayhap
As You Like It. Celia/Rosalind. R. 1,224 words.
Written for kink_bingo (kink: writing on the body). 'Lying prone, as if in supplication before the great god Hypnos whose worship no man can abjure long, Rosalind displayed the fine white planes of her shoulders and back to great advantage, which put Celia in mind of a fine jest.'

( The bed which Ganymede shared rustically with his sister Aliena in their rude rented cottage was not so grand as that the cousins Rosalind and Celia had occupied in their proper persons at court. )

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Wednesday reading meme

2013-06-20T03:06:31Z

What I've been reading

I read Point of Dreams, the sequel to Point of Hopes, which has everything I loved about that book, plus the mystery is set in a theatre, something which might as well have been taken from a checklist of things I love. I am still bemused by how un-shippy Nico/Philip is in the actual text—not only do they get together off-page, but even when their relationship is occasionally made the focus in this book, it's about 90% how-are-we-perceived-as-a-couple/how-am-I-perceived-in-pursuing-this-relationship to maybe 10% shippy feels. Which is explored in an interesting way, but I can see that I'm going to have to turn to fanfic if I want any shippy feels. That's okay, because fanfic is good at shippy feels and less good at murder mysteries or ridiculously intricate worldbuilding.

I read Invisibility, David Levithan's new book co-written with Andrea Cremer, an author I wasn't familiar with, and it was thoroughly mediocre. In Every Day, a book I liked but wasn't thrilled by, the mechanism of the central speculative conceit is never explained or understood at all and the characters just grapple with how it affects them. The first hundred pages or so of Invisibility are like that, but then they do introduce the magical system of the world and it's just incredibly generic and blah. The central het romance is also really boring—I mean, sure, you would probably fall instantly head over heels with the first person of the appropriate sex whom you were able to interact with in any shape or form, but that doesn't make it interesting to read about (or explicable from her perspective). If anything about the blurb for this book sounds remotely interesting to you, read Holly Black's Curse Workers series instead for a similar premise that is approximately ten thousand times better executed.

I read Casanova: Gula, and I continue to dig it.

I read Neil Gaiman's new book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and for all some of the blurbs and early reviews were a bit hyperbolic and I didn't in fact think it was the best book in the known universe I really, really liked it. It has a lot in common with Among Others, another semi-autobiographical-novel-with-magic. It's good about what it's like to be seven, but also what it's like to remember what it was like to be seven.

I read Captive Prince: Volume One, the first part of that online original slavefic turned traditionally published original slavefic that a lot of people are raving about it and I was…less than impressed, let us say. Far be it from me to set myself up as some kind of authority on where Your kink is not my kink shades over into Your kink has unfortunate implications that you do not necessarily seem to be aware of, but I was really off put by the seemingly endless descriptions of how much contempt our titular captive prince has for the effete, made-up "pets" who comprise his fellow slaves in a hostile nation, who are somehow completely different from the slaves they had back home, because he says so, that's why. There is nowhere near as much tropey goodness as I was expecting, nor is the political intriguing plot solid enough to stand as a different kind of novel that just happens to feature slave tropes.

What I'm reading next

God, I don't know, I might read volume two of Captive Prince to see if it gets a lot better or if all the rabid fans are just on crack. And hopefully also some books that I legitimately enjoy. All this kink I'm not into reminds me that I need to reread Kushiel's Avatar for that Phèdre/Hyacinthe story I owe Bevy…

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"I can top you with my brain."

2013-02-18T01:53:39Z

I happened to wind up at the gym at the exact time to catch the last twenty-five minutes of the Firefly episode "Trash" on the Science channel (which, apparently, shows science fiction, which I suppose is logical, since the SciFi/SyFy/Syphilis channel shows "reality" shows about ghosts). This made me happy, because the last twenty-five minutes of Trash contains my single favorite scene in the entire show, and then made me sad, because it reminded me that virtually nobody ships Simon/Jayne, and worse still, the vanishingly few people who do ship it incorrectly.¹

I mean, I can readily see why it's a niche pairing. People might prefer Simon and Jayne in canon pairings, such as Simon/Kaylee, Simon/River, Jayne/Vera, or Jayne/his bunk.² I can also see why there is virtually no toppy!Simon, because pretty much every main character, reoccurring character, or extra on the show would top⁴ Simon in their actual or theoretical relationship. I'm not 100% certain that Simon could top a Tupperware container.

Except. Except. He completely dominates Jayne in the scene in the infirmary at the end of Trash. Comprehensively. Effortlessly. There is no way in which Simon is not in control, from his physically paralyzing Jayne so they can have this little chat to his utterly calm assertion that no matter what Jayne does, Simon will never ever harm him, that he will be trusting Jayne and that Jayne should do likewise. I find this utterly, scorchingly hot.

And yet no one ever writes them like that. Or if they have, I have yet to find it. This makes me sad like the end of Serenity.⁵

¹Which they are entitled to do! I mean, they're completely wrong. But if they enjoy being wrong, they should feel free to do so.

²Yeah, I don't really ship Jayne with. You know. People.³

³This pairing being something of an exception, obviously.

⁴Here used in a very loose sense to indicate a whole range of behavior ranging from mild sexual assertiveness to formalized D/s regardless of sexual positions employed, if any.

⁵Yeah, I know, I should write it myself. But I'm really, really lazy!

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