scarylullabiez

The video for "Love the Way You Lie" is pretty much everything I love in a music video: fire, sex, Dominic Monaghan, relationship violence, trashy!Megan Fox, All-American-Boy!Eminem (standing in the Amber Waves of Grain no less), and Rihanna's gorgeous little sneer.

I don't know if I've talked about it here before, but the year I was 18, I was on the receiving end of a lot of violence, from others, and eventually from myself. Now that I think about it, music videos have articulated what that was like for me more completely and accurately than any other medium. (See Bad Romance.) A collection of images more than anything else, with a plot that's kind of pantomimed, not actually that complicated at all, and a song. Kind of like how I mentioned my experience with violence at the beginning of this paragraph - it's relevant to the topic at hand, and thus worth mentioning, but attempting to elaborate wouldn't be nearly as accurate or... eloquent I guess, as just throwing it out there as a simple fact, something that happened, something that made this particular bit of media relevant to my interests.

Now that I've said that there's no way to elaborate on it, I'm going to elaborate on it. Rihanna's lines in this song are about enjoying the pain a bit, and that's something that I experienced and have always felt guilty about, and then guilty about feeling guilty. When I was being abused (ugh, I hate that word, can anyone else think of a better word? Aside from "victimized?") I was depressed. I attempted suicide multiple times that year. I felt about as worthwhile and beautiful as a piece of used, soggy toilet paper, and yet. The world seemed much more vibrant to me then than it does now. I was so much more creative when I was suffering and maladjusted. I remember having such vivid dreams, writing all the time; poetry and short stories and 15 page free-writes that were so much funnier and sadder and more eloquent than anything I write these days, when I write at all. The beauty of my mom's flowers reduced me to tears at least 4 times that I remember. This was also the year that I learned to associate sex with violence, real violence, not the play of BDSM. That's where the real guilt kicks in because the sex-violence association is a major problem, or at least it causes major problems in our society. I hate that I've become part of that problem. (And it affected my play. That year made me much more of a sub than I was, but it also made me less trustworthy as a sub.) On the other hand, I'm a hedonist and a humanist and I don't think anyone including me should feel guilty for the way they feel. Feeling guilt over kinks and knee-jerk emotional reactions makes me part of yet another problem. But anyway, Rihanna's lines. There's an admission of enjoyment there, but an accusation against the perpetrator at the same time. Everything that happened to me, I let happen to me. I am absolutely certain that I was as much a part of the problem as my abuser. (I NEED ANOTHER WORD.) But I do not believe in blaming the victim at all, not even a little bit. When confronted with this situation as it applies to others, I don't have even the slightest emotional undercurrent of victim-blame. So that's a nice paradox.

I'm gonna end here and hit post before I lose my nerve.

Dear Criminal Minds Fandom,

How dare you call yourselves a fandom? You don't have any hooker AU's. Without hooker AU's, you are not a real fandom. I'm sure that's written down somewhere, and even if it isn't - for fuck's sake. Your show has a character with child molestation as part of his canonical background. And the actor who plays that character has let photographers do some pretty interesting things to him.* I can't believe you haven't run with that. I'm very, very disappointed in you.

You people are on your own, btw. I am not going to write your hooker AU's for you.**


                         Righteously Disgusted Perverted,
                                   scary-lullabies



*Seriously, that last one? If he were my son, and he tried to leave the house like that, we would have words.

**I sketched out most of the plot on my break today, and I hope to have finished agonizing over the first part within two weeks.

Holy shit, emily-posts is an available sn on livejournal. Why don't I have that sn?

Can anyone instruct me on the generally accepted etiquette re: sequels in an anonymous comment fic meme? Like, if someone wrote something awesome in the meme, and someone else wants to request a sequel to it in the meme with a new request that said something like, "Hey, this over here was awesome, and I'd love to see where some of the other amazing writers here would take it. Please include boa constrictors" - is that ok? Or if someone wants to write their own full-length fic, posted inside or outside the meme, using something from the meme as a base or as inspiration, what then? I would say that in a normal, non-anonymous setting, good manners dictate that permission should be acquired from the original writer before the second writer creates a sequel. And obviously, the original fic should be linked and credited in the notes, and in this case, the meme as a whole and the thread containing the specific piece would be linked and credited. But what to you do about getting permission when it's an anonymous meme? I'm assuming that either the normal courtesy of asking permission is excused, or writing sequels is simply Not Done, since there is no real was to get permission. I have no idea which of those is considered normal or polite, and as far as I've seen the host/moderator of the meme in question has not posted any rules or preferences about this.

Thoughts, flist?

I have a less-than-300-word piece of Star Trek XI fic that could use a quick beta. Any takers?

Thank you, xtinethepirate!

1) Bellydance recital was yesterday. While I'm sure we were terrible what with not rehearsing due to fires, I have never felt more comfortable or had more fun preforming. It might have looked like crap, but it felt awesome.

2) I've sat down to write this meta about eight times already and I'm not getting anywhere. I'm completely inarticulate when it comes to this. I had an English professor once who was very interested in Wicca and witchcraft and encouraged me to write about it all the time, but I could never get more than a few sentences out before getting stuck, rereading my three sentences, and going 'Wtf was I just thinking?!' and starting all over again.

3) I look hot today.