shadows_of

Archive
about me // what i’m listening to // Servant of Duty // Ret-Con

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Project: Summerwrite. 150,000 words written between May and August of 2008.
(1) A Servant of Duty [Genre: Historical Romance, Regency]
(2) Ret-Con [Genre: Science Fiction/PWP]

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( cut here for space )

accidentally perfect, brigits_flame


about nisha. birth:

( birth of something special )

I HATE THIS. so i'm looking for some kind of logic or something to my research. and i'm *just* realizing that there are no parallel lines when it comes to legend.

point: for the wild hunt, there's a variety of leaders that range from the legend to the supernatural. so there's a possibility for it to be a real character from history, or a god. or something.

point: in welsh mythology, gwynn ap nudd, god of the underworld, rides at the head of cwn anwnn, the hounds of anwnn. thus, the wild hunt = reaping souls for the underworld. which, basically true for ALL of the wild hunt mythos.

this is where it gets tricky. in irish myth, the head of the hunt is (maybe) fionn mac cumhaill, a real character from history who was the last leader of the Fianna, the standing army for the high king (peter! i mean, sorry. too much narnia in my life right now...).

OR. it's mannanan, son of lir (the sea god) who rides at the front of the Fairy cavalcade (marcradh shiodha). which, ok... i can deal with that and the tuatha de danann because faery = otherworld = underworld. fae = harbingers of death. yay! except where marcradh shiodha also means the children of lir, who were turned into swans in myth. um, swans =/= hellhounds. ever. i mean, in the legend? the children of lir die after 900 years. so the likelihood of them being the soul reapers... low. like not at all on the scale.

so, now i have to work around Sean O'Neill's Lear-esque death (heh, lir = lear, did you know?) and figure out how to get cwn anwnn to = marcradh shiodha. somehow.

also a wrench in the works: lir was fighting nuada (maybe) for rulership of the tuatha de danann (faery, otherworld, as you will). and nuada (airgetlam, thus aragorn, clearly. hahah) paralells with gwynn ap nudd's father (nudd llaw eraint).

huh.

so if tuatha de danann = gods made to live in the sidhe mounds (that is, leaders of the fae), sidhe (mounds) = tir na nog = otherworld = underworld, and lir = nudd, then mannanan = gwynn ap nudd atd the marcradh shiodha = cwn anwnn, because marcradh shiodha = fairy host = the sluagh. WIN. ok. so that took far too much interconnection to work, sure. but now it MAKES SENSE.


here's the current: ( bit )

enablelove's wank meme (supernatural centric)

( jensen )


( sam )


( sam and dean )

the silence gets us nowhere
prompt: brigits_flame: key
notes: key = communication. old memories for nix and the threesome of doom.

( what she don't know won't hurt her... )

moments of devastating beauty

He calls me beautiful when I remind him of home. Of days in the city and nights just outside a farm. He still calls it home, even though he’s been away longer than he ever was there. I know he wants to go back… but I don’t think he’d be able to fit in now, not with an American's perspective on life.

He calls me beautiful when I hear the lilting strains of some Irish or Scottish music. I pretend like I can Riverdance. The first time he saw me do it, I was in a skirt. He watched me, and with misty eyes, called me beautiful. He calls me beautiful when I dance. And he wonders how I ever learned to be so light on my feet when he sees me day in and day out. And Mom has to explain to him that I’ve always been light on my feet. From ballet school to now, you barely hear me if I’m running late for school. My sister, on the other hand… THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP. Every step is loud for her.

He calls me beautiful when I remind him of the Indian girls who wear dozens of silver bangles as a sign of their beauty. The jangle of bracelets when I'd move my arm reminds him of the girls he used to know. I haven’t worn them in a while… Perhaps I don’t feel beautiful enough. And, on Sundays, when I dress up, I ask him what he sees. He smiles softly and says… beautiful.

But he calls me beautiful when I make him feel at home. When I remind him of what he’s left behind. And he pulls me close and holds me tight, tears threatening in his eyes as he whispers that I’m beautiful.

He makes me feel loved when he says I’m beautiful. It’s nice to know someone thinks you are… even if it is your father.

title: with gold and silver (part 2)
fandom: supernatural
spoilers: all aired episodes
notes and warnings: gen fic, which isn't really a warning, but more like a first for me. pseudo case fic.


( oh bear me away on your snow white wings to my immortal home )

hey, if y'all are members (or become members!!) of therealljidol, could y'all please vote for my entry @ shadows_of? i'm beginning to worry that maybe people don't actually *like* what i write and are going to call me on it this week.

why? because my latest entry has pretty much a third or a half of the highest in that bracket's entry's votes... and it's pretty much THE SAME EXACT ENTRY. down to the reference to Glamour Shots and the requisite pic at the end. swear i didn't read hers beforehand, but still. it's almost exactly alike, but i get less than half her votes. i know i'm a newbie to LJ Idol and she's been around awhile. but still. this strikes me as odd.


just. ok. discount my whining. please vote for this lame loser because, hey. i'd like to stay in the game for a little bit longer. i'd like folks to read my stuff and actually comment and make me feel wanted or validated or ok, maybe the slightest bit internet famous, ok? attention, i wants it.

Title: The Road, Paved with Good Intentions
Prompt: mini-nano, "If you're going through hell, keep going." ~Winston Churchill
Verse: This Mortal Coil (Nano 09) Apocrypha

( mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys... )

title: with gold and silver (part 1)
fandom: supernatural
spoilers: up to 5.08, generally speaking
notes and warnings: gen fic, which isn't really a warning, but more like a first for me. pseudo case fic. written on prompts from days 2, 3 and 6 of mini_nanowrimo. there will be more... i've got some things vaguely plotted in my head.

( i'll close your eyes so you can't see... )

Smile

Of all the things I like or don't like about myself (I'm a woman, so I'm slightly entitled to disliking more about myself than is necessarily dislikable...), I'm the most ambivalent about my smile. Yearbook pictures are like a string of bad DMV visits. Somehow they always scheduled those photos at the worst time of day: lunchtime. My hair would've flattened and gotten fuzzy from the up-and-down of traveling three flights of stairs for class and lunch. And anxiety would've led to a near sleepless night the night before. Add to that the worst genetic trait to be passed down from my paternal side: lazy eye. It was a recipe for disaster every time. Suddenly, all the yearbooks or the picture orders would come home and I would look OLD: bags under my eyes, only focusing on the camera with one eye and a lopsided, tired half-smile, one that begged to be let return to a boring day of school so that I could go nap or something.

Worst. Ever.

I have to admit, I did have two or three good pictures when I was in school. But they were the few times I did not smile or even make the attempt. (That is, except for one picture in 1st grade... but since I was tiny and overeager, I'm not too worried about it.) Take, for instance, my senior portraits at Glamour Shots. I know, I know. Automatically, each picture is airbrushed for quality and the soft, romantic look. I know. But. Honestly. I was wrapped in a lovely red boa and staring down into a light. 3/4 profile shot, no smile to be had. I looked beautiful. It was the first time I ever thought I had potential to be pretty. You only saw my lazy eye maybe twice in all the proofs, which is a major win in my book.

But. I mean. I have smiled in pictures before. And not all of them are terrible. I've got some of the most perfect teeth I've seen outside of folks having braces (not bragging, it's fact). My entire top row of teeth are even and straight and just... perfectly aligned in that "Wow, you must've paid a pretty penny for that smile" kind of way. You'd think that kind of thing would make me smile more on the whole.

I just. I don't know.

My boss tells me that she worried about me in my job for a while when she first came on as manager. I deal with students, staff and faculty at my University with any minor technical problems they have with their laptops or the computer lab I manage. And my blank face? Very angry and closed off. If it wasn't for my impeccable service when asked a question, the way I make sure the problem is completely solved before I wish the customer a good day... I wouldn't have become the student manager. I was told that I should smile more, in order to not seem so unapproachable. It's nothing I'm doing on purpose. I just don't find all that much to smile about on a regular basis.

Which brings us to the crux of the matter, I guess. I feel like an idiot sitting around with a smile on my face all the time. What's so cheery in the world? There's far more to think about, to be concerned over, to feel distress about. I'd look silly if I always had a smile.

Which is a shame. My smile's not bad, not all the time.

Title: dead men tell no tales
Prompt: day 5 mini-nanowrimo, picture of jeans and feet on wet pavement
Verse: This Mortal Coil (Nano 09) Apocrypha

( still i wouldn't have it any other way... )

Title: Like a Sip of Sparkling Burgundy Brew
Prompt: mini_nanowrimo: The old moon is tarnished/with smoke of the flood/The dead leaves are varnished/with colour like blood. ~Sea Lullaby by Elinor Wylie
Verse: This Mortal Coil (NaNo 09), Apocrypha

( sean o'neill, drunkard )

Title: Her Hope Chest
Prompt: China (brigits_flame, November, Week 1)
Verse: This Mortal Coil (NaNo 09), Apocrypha

( hope chest, glory box, dowry box )

August 5th

It’s hard to breathe. She lies in bed and all you can do is watch the weight of her words gather on your chest and weave itself into a blanket to suffocate. You never know if it’s about the words themselves or the flow of them that make you want to grieve. But you lie still beneath the weight of her words.

She talks about raising her brothers and sisters, how her mother was at work until late in the evening. How she never had the chance to be a child because she? She had responsibility. Words like “college” and “father” fall from her lips like gifts and curses, scorpions wrapped in a bow. The things she never had (“long hair,” “light skin,” money, things, shoes without holes), the things that she gives as a present to her children with only the edges sharpened by her regret and disdain. You lie still beneath the weight of her words, breath slight for fear of wounding yourself on her words.

She closes her eyes to stem the flood of tears and cries out in her incomprehension. What did she do wrong? For a daughter and a son to be at loggerheads for a dozen years and no one is any the wiser? You grieve and strive to stop listening to the tide of a parent’s heartbreak. You’ll drown.

You can hear the accusation in her voice, even as you sneak away to your own bedroom and the sound of her voice is only a memory. That she’d never do anything like that to her mother is understood. That she’d sacrificed, all too clear. Thoughts tied to the weight of your mother’s grief, you drown, wondering what the hell an 11 year old could have done.

some untidy bullety thoughts about "this mortal coil" (which, hey, new nano = new tag, y/y?). don't mind me. it's mostly housekeeping anyway.

• sean o'neill? is that just way too easy a name? i feel like a guy living in 16th century ireland, a victim of the 9 yrs war, should definitely have a more... authentic (? is that even the right word here? that's like a 'white' substitute for 'ethnic' isn't it?) or at least time appropriate name. maybe actual gaelic, not that anyone would be paying attention to that.
  • side note: this totally means, though, that for a portion of the novel i'll get to use all that research i did on irish gaelic for my old baby xsintrickx . YES. (totally not a plug for one of my boring old RP characters. i always feel as if i've shafted him somehow, even if he did get the happy i would strive for--fiancee, college degree, boats and dancing...)
• so the beginning is all Braveheart-esque, followed up with a drunken 17th century King Lear type sendoff (crazy, collapses, dies) into the Wild Hunt (Ghost Riders in the Sky). FFwd to late 1800s, and we meet current hero(?) Joe Stoddard. (hah, average joe?) joe gets your typical western.
• i'm almost entirely sure that sean will reappear as the voice: "cowboy, change your ways today, or with us you will ride trying to catch the devil's herd across these endless skies."
• possibility for redemption?? for both, i mean.
• did you know that a western is possibly the WORST worst choice of novel ever?
• thinking of putting stoddard in the 1875 time period, disillusioned with the fight against the lakota. maybe some officers took advantage of the love of his life? rape and murder.
  
  • hey. no one liked pinkertons. besides, they got paid ridiculously and they must've been some mean sumbiches.

that's at least the start of my thinkiness. i have the vague notion. just not enough to write anything as yet. it may be because i'm dying of wisdom toothache right now that i can't think anymore.

for annella. ( prompt: castiel learns about hugging, and the boys can't complain because it'd be like kicking a puppy. )


for chash. ( prompt: wee!chesters, snowed in, one blanket )


for wanttobeatree. ( prompt: sam/dean, near death experience, finally surrendering to the cuddle call!! )

for audaciously. ( prompt: big bang theory, penny teaches sheldon to cuddle )


1552 wrds
for bekkis' cuddle fic meme

you hugged me.
you can deny it now, of course. but i'll remember.
try as i might to forget, i'll remember.

week two of the summer abroad and you?
you made the first move.
you broke the rules.
you extended your arms and pressed chest to chest and folded me in your embrace.
a scant second and i knew that you and me? we.
joined heart to heart in an instant.

next to you i felt dirty and unkempt
like my high school uniform
untidy wrinkled and careworn.

so sue me if i fell that hard for you.
you, with your dorky glasses.
you, with your legs like water reeds.
you and your chivalry and outdated sense of noblesse oblige to the american.
two weeks and you enveloped me.
the antidote to a stiff upper lip.

it's nearly four years since i met you.
you wrote me letters every month.
you paid for my cell phone service so that you and me. we.
talking and texting about my trip.
you spent the bitter weekend where she got married having fun with me.
all because you reached out to me.
melded limb to limb one second.

and when i say we loved each other biblically,
i mean to say that i knew you in that way that adam
upon sight of eve
declared her at last bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh

i spent almost four years waiting on you.

and yet
now
i always remember to never mention you
in conversations with friends.
As if the whisper of your name
could conjure your presence.
i try to remember to think of you
only as broken clocks herald time.

i never remember to forget you.
you hugged me.

My name’s Morgue (well, that’s what I go by, at any rate), and you can find me under the name wellowned or shadows_of here @LJ, @discursive on Twitter or at my website drowning!Ophelia... which always remains a work in progress. I’m 24-ish, love writing, love language, love music and movies and reading. I work in the computer labs at our local university as tech support, and have been a manager for about a year. I’ve been writing for as long as I’ve had the opportunity. I’m usually a poet and I can’t stand deadlines. I’m a perfectionist, so I go through and edit and correct typos while I’m writing, even though I know it’s better to just get it out there. Sue me. That being said, I don’t particularly care for capital letters (Word capitalizes for me), and I write in incomplete sentences most of the time because I’m that much of a loser.

In the area of quirky facts to know, I’m half English (my dad moved to the States when he married my mom). I crochet, but can’t knit to save my life. I've studied French since middle school and will be graduating in the spring with a Bachelor of Arts in French. I bid for things on eBay, but don’t particularly care if I win them. I read basically 1 romance novel a day for 7/8 of my freshman year of high school (that’s 350+ pages in 4 hours, 5 days a week, for maybe 6 or 7 months). I’m geeky enough to work on your computer, but I’m the most normal at my job.

I'll generally tell you anything else about me, but it's very tedious and boring and I'd rather tell you about someone else anyway.