~~random observation time

``Draco kissed him like he was air and he wanted to breathe him in, and, as far as Harry was concerned, that was the best way to be kissed."

i adore the last chapter of `the losing side', and of course i could've quoted any number of lines... but.... *sigh*
yeah.
that's such a good (and obvious, but still) way to tell, if the person kissing you is The Right One, i swear.
am i a ridiculously over-the-top romantic (well, i know i am). but... yeah. that is definitely the best way to be kissed.
~~

gah..! neil gaiman has a journal..! everyone has a journal, these days-- even me...! (gah, again). he's funny & adorable & wow. almost too good to really exist, heh. and he won a hugo for `american gods', which i'm feeling happy-joy-joyous about, except that i haven't read it yet (oh yeah, *gasp*, *sputter*, etc). i haven't read good omens either. i've read a bunch of his short stories-- i adore them, and they go fast-- & of course i've read every graphic novel i've been able to lay hands on, except his first one, that collab with Dave McKean, that is so hard to come by. i'll read it. sometimes i guess i get sidetracked by reviews and such and take them as excuses to put off reading things (sometimes indefinitely). and, i have to admit, a part of me still is bitter that he's not doing comics, heh. a bit weird, but true.
    i've missed my comics. i haven't read them for like, a year now, not consistently-- maybe even more-- too lazy to go to the store (out of the way), and, now that books of magic is...well, the way it is. neil is pretty much singlehandedly responsible for making me such a comics lover anyway. so, it's all his fault.

    i don't know, though, how i wound up this way-- not having read any of his novel-length works, and yet worshipping him probably more than any writer currently living. i was a bit disappointed with stardust, true, but that doesn't quite explain it. i'm sure this won't be the case permanently though. it's funny because i adore authors for so long, and yet i don't quite know how to deal with not loving every single thing they write, with seeing fluctuations in them. patricia mckillip's like that-- she's amazing, but she kind of... varies, as to how much a particular book grabs me by the throat. and peter beagle-- i haven't read all his stuff-- & `a fine and private place' wasn't that... intense-- ok i didn't even finish it. i definitely play favorites. in the end-- as much as i adore authors-- my actual worship, i think, is of their particular works. i mean, sometimes it's more than one-- but even if it's ten, i think it's just those particular ten.

i adore sandman with a crazed passion. everything about neil's writing and the storyline and the characters and everything, is like, divinely tailored to my sensibilities, it seems, almost. i adore his books of magic mini-series, and black orchid, and his short stories, which are just so punchy and dense and atmospheric and lyrical and yet gritty and.... just, so full of personality and yet not bogged down by it. he uses language without it ever using him, and i'm amazed and flabbergasted by that. even as much as i adore intensely lyrical writers, with loads of imagery and metaphor and beauty spread everywhere-- it's a whole different level, when you just precisely place your words, and one doesn't even notice the beauty of them, or the shaping of the text, and the text just reaches out and shapes you, and you're just part of the narrative.

patricia mckillip can actually do that, too, as much as i love her language for itself. and peter beagle. and a.s. byatt. and joyce carol oates, & harlan ellison (ha! would harlan be surprised?) and theodore sturgeon (you can tell my genre-bloated roots, can't you). it's almost like it's beyond poetry-- this is the demonstration that not only is prose not inferior to poetry, but indeed it can transcend poetry by being unnoticeable, by going beyond structure and rhythm and meter and metaphor and conventional things-- into just pure flowing story, into complete transparency.

another thing, now that i think of it, that i associate with Really Great Writing, is a sort of inevitability. as much as i enjoy `shipping and identifying with characters and the soap-opera aspect of things-- i love following the great human drama, with the stories just unfolding, as they always have, and the emotions playing themselves out, and the follies coming to their natural ends. maybe i'm just thinking of The Sandman, but.... i wouldn't call it a tragedy. i mean, everything in it was perfect and inevitable and contained within its very beginning-- and yet with every microcosmic view, it was still fascinating and involving and you still cared about every character. in the end, even with the death and destruction and loss of dreams-- (ahem)-- it was just full of hope and rebirth and a love for life. and it wasn't because of anything that happened. it was the characters themselves. they wouldn't let themselves be brought down. they were-- literally-- endless, and paradoxically indestructable-- even though they were. death isn't the end-- there is no end. that is, i think, one of the central insights found in storytelling and dreaming, which are.... endless.
    in the end of `brief lives'.... that scene, where they bury orpheus' head, and the one directly before it, with delirium and her new canine friend-- wow. nothing can touch that.

~~pan/hook...! otp contender....! ha...!

here's the proof (book quote and everything). had to share. ahahahahah...!! oh god. this is mostly funny 'cause like, even though i don't say this in casual conversation, peter pan was so, my pre-pubescent love-god, i swear. which is to say, i adored (and still adore) him, and that silly cartoon, too...! ha...! hook...! i'm so, so evil. i don't even like age-differential slashy pairings, but this is just too deliciously evil to resist. please, please, please, PLEASE GOD, let someone (not me... no... i'm a peter/wendy shipper to the end, i tell you...! *crazed laughter*)-- anyone-- write a slash story with hook aged down somehow-- i don't care how-- please-- please-- i need it-- you can see it can't you....oh yes.... oh yeeessssss......

hook-- young-- swashbuckling-- yet lonely & pathetic-- with that pirate's shirt and those pirate's abs-- with long curly hair-- a sort of... dark, somewhat hard-to-see beauty about him. mostly he's a horrid git, self-absorbed, vain, selfish, arrogant... oh....god... *dies* you hear me, don't you, Divine Slashy Writer?? yes....! i will adore you forever and send you d/h-snogging cookies...! or anything else you might dream up...! wah...!

so, so delicious. and hilarious...! oh god. no, this isn't anything like harry/snape, no, no, and no.
because he simply -has- to be aged down-- hmm, i dunno, and peter aged up?-- but that's even more unbelievable. but anyway. maybe he never -was- that old, have you thought of that???! maybe he's just old-seeming to pre-adolescent boys...! maybe he's... maybe he's... 27 or something...! yesssss...!! i bet j.m. barrie never tells us his age, does he. hmf. they're so otp...! oh...my...gahd..... what would wendy think?? i so, so love it.

and oh, serious_black wrote one, but of course, of course, i want more, more, more, more.... *evil grin*

~~
``The dead did not look sexy and dangerous.
They were, after all, the dead."
    am now in love with `to rule in hell'. heh. yah y'all knew it was a matter of time & of course it was. ahhh.... mostly-dead!harry. *laughs* how i luuuuurve theee.

~~more ficlet-review spam & actual ficlet, too

read ztrin's ficlet (as usual, like nothing else, heh)-- and am now firmly convinced someone should write seaside-carnival!h/d.
    i have a weakness for carnival stories-- set in the dark, with shooting stars & cotton candy & fortune tellers & whispered secrets & magic circus tents & sticky fingers & lost innocence & stray wishes & the whole bit. the Starlight Carnival comes to hogwarts? a day trip to hogsmeade, mayhap? ahhh... nothing quite like a love-story set on a ferris wheel-- muggle, shmuggle-- it could be run by magic, hmf..!
a shooting star-- and a wish.
and some strategically placed roses.

( it would go something like this... but not quite. here's the actual -ficlet- part of this. reena wrote something. wah...! er. h/d, pg13, etc etc. )

and, wow-- hackthis has claimed yet another piece of my soul, sold to a h/d fic. but what a way to go, heh.

``Draco thinks that love should end in a bonfire with smoke that wafts up to a cloudless September sky and disappears."
    & i love him, i do, i do, but-- he's a silly boy, i think. and he's wrong (ha!) the horror, the horror. love should actually end with two people bickering over morning coffee, i think, and taking turns bringing in the paper, and trailing mud into the house, and still feeling like kissing each other senseless, bad breath and all, in the middle of a sarcastic round of come-backs-- just like the good old times, heh. and it'd be like,

"can you believe you thought you should kill me?"

"well, it's not like you'd ever had the guts to kill me, and you know it, potter."

"ha! you wish. i'd kill you in a second. i just didn't want to put you out of your misery. weren't you enjoying yourself, wallowing in all that angst, back then? i know i was enjoying watching you, excusing all the shagging by saying you'll make up for it with a nice bout with senseless death."

"not senseless, never senseless. it made perfect sense, you see. you had to die. you were meant to die. you couldn't not die. in fact, you needed to die, otherwise i just couldn't live with myself and my own degeneration into waffiness, you see."

"so how does it feel, draco? on the other side?"

"ah well. can't complain about the shagging. wouldn't be doing too much of that, what with you six feet under and all that."

"true, true. i always knew you were a sensible sort of person, really."

"don't you smirk at me. i am too, sensible. why i let you live, i'll never know."

"wasn't it more fun planning to kill me, than actually doing it?"

"well yes, there's that...."

"you just never knew a good thing when you had it, admit it malfoy."

"you'll never understand the finer points of self-denial and the fine art of self-torture, will you."

"no. oh well, at least i'm ok at the finer points of getting you to shut up about them, eh?"

"well yes, there's that."
~~
hee...! aww, i tease because i love~:)

evil.

*licks lips*
i....want...to ....kill....stupid....lab users......

*sobs*
oh, god. i can't ...handle...old...people...who tell me, "but i'm stupid and ignorant, and help me, because i don't have a brain". i'm polite, and nice, but my god, that stretches it to the limit. polite, nice, "but i'm stupid" people. ugh.

"do you know how to use internet explorer?"

"uh, what?"

"internet. explorer."

"oh. well i think maybe. maybe. i used it yesterday, maybe."

"oh, well, tell me if you need more help."

"how to you go back one page?"

*tears out hair* kill me now.