Sakura of DOOM

So I volunteered to help out with a rat adoption fair. I felt rather awkward going, seeing as how there is a rat adoption community, and I didn't know anyone. Plus, they had lots of volunteers, and I felt rather useless. But I ended up getting to play with some really cute rats for two hours, so what's not to like about that? There was this one cute boy rat about the same age as my rats, hooded, except the stripe down his back was so thick and black that he looked like he just had two white patches on the side. So cute and squishy! I wanted to bring him home very, very much but knew 1) the boy might not be too happy coming home to that and 2) I'm leaving for Taiwan in a few days and that's definitely not enough time to get the rats all used to each other. I hope he finds a good home.

The day would have been much better, except I had to wake up at 9 for the rat fair, and I had stayed up till 3 the night before reading X-Men movie fanfic. Gah. I don't know how I got into it! I don't even care that much about the movies! I think I was looking for good Syd/Weiss fic -- it's another fandom I don't really care about, but I read some really cute ones, and well, I like Weiss, and I like Sydney as long as Vaughn isn't around. I think I would like Alias about ten times better if Vaughn and the subsequent doomed love affair of doom were excised.

I blame this Syd/Weiss thing on Yahtzee's Soap Opera, which has a great Weiss voice (have I mentioned that I like Weiss? He's so nice and normal). I also like RJ Anderson's What You Never Knew You Wanted, which is angsty and mind-twisty, as well as Celli Lane's The Thousand and Second Time. I like Syd/Weiss in fic because it's the anti-angst and because it makes Sydney so much more likeable than when she's pining after Vaughn. Plus, it's got that thing where they start out as friends and gradually go somewhere else.

And then somehow I managed to stumble onto Logan/Rogue from XMM. This is probably because I read Jenn's For Now series and Katherine's remix For Now (The Fuck Waiting Remix). Jenn's is about Rogue growing up and learning to not be afraid, and Katherine's has Logan's POV. I think the thing that got me the most was that while the story starts out as young girl pining over older man, it quickly becomes something about growing older, about fear and control, and of course, love. I keep thinking about rachelmanija's post on conflict and compatability in romances -- I love these two pieces of fic so much because they are on subjects that I wish more romances would tackle. There is a very believable internal conflict that gets in the way of Logan and Rogue falling in love and acting on it, which is extremely refreshing in light of the romance genre because it focuses not on external conflict to separate the two or even huge personality differences, which often ends up with a romance conclusion that I don't quite wholly believe in. It's more on accepting yourself and learning to accept love as well, about the frightening nature of being in love and not knowing what to do with it.

I also like how Logan is patient enough to wait for Rogue to accept herself first. I think too many romance heroes use sex as a weapon against the heroines, forcing them to a decision they're not yet ready to make by the strength of physical desire, which is why those scenes of forced seduction read so wrong and squicky to me now. I get all that stuff about women being afraid to make the first move and thus the attractiveness of the forced seduction scene, but I'm so sick of reading them! The most annoying bit is that there aren't very many alternatives to the forced seduction scenario in romances. It feels like I have to wade through twenty books just to get to one with a nice hero who is willing to be patient, to let the heroine figure herself out first. The world always seems to stop when a romance hero needs to figure himself out via falling in love and finding his sensitive side, but I feel like too many heroines are rushed through their own path and never really figure out their wants and needs. And this seems to be rather contrary, given that romance is primarily a female genre focused on female wish-granting.

Another thing I like about the fic is that when we finally do get to the kissing and sex stuff (it's a bit of a fade to black, but you know), it makes sense. It's the destination that the story has been travelling toward, it's not gratuitous, it makes psychological sense, gah, that plus Rogue's problem of not being able to touch is so nicely integrated into the theme of the story. Sometimes, this is why I read fic instead of romance novels.

I feel a little guilty about my increasing irascibleness re: romance novels. I like the genre. I'm not ashamed of liking the genre. I just wish more books in the genre would tackle all the neat psychological issues and gender bits and whatnot that seem to be such a perfect fit for the genre, except they don't, and it drives me nuts. I wish more people writing in the genre took risks and pushed the envelope because I think romance is a great way to explore all this interesting stuff, and instead it's relegated to the back bin of "girly stuff" and no one takes it seriously.

While I'm at it, I would also like a pony.

Read with caution (i.e. I have unpopular opinions re: a ton of stuff in Alias)

ETA: Spoilers for future episodes in the comments...

( Warning: Spoilers for episode and promo )

Spoilers there for Alias, Buffy and Angel, up to the latest airing (Alias S3, Angel S5, Buffy S7?). Dunno if it's necessary, but figure, cut anyway, might as well disclaim.

( Shipping meme )

Actually, it's all Lauren/Melissa George icons, because I like her a lot.

Two have some nudity. Screencaps from wisteria_, Alias official site, and the official Melissa George fansite.

( Icons )

Don't think I've ever made that many icons at once before. The official fansite just had waaaay too many pretty pictures of MG. As always, want, take, have. Feel free to customize, or if you want, feel free to ask me to add text for you. Enjoy!

Much Alias bitching up to ep. 5 of season 3, highly derogatory to S/V and Vaughn in particular ( here )

Orson Scott Card is coming here!! Well, here as in the San Jose Barnes and Noble on the 13th! And I can actually make it and hopefully get my copy of Ender's Game signed and listen to him and meet an author! I am quite excited ^_^. I've never been able to go to one of these signings before as most authors I read don't tour in Taiwan. Or in Princeton it seems. I'm kind of scared to go because I've read some of his essays on his site and an interview with him in Salon, and I feel I'm not sure I actually want to hear what was going on in his mind when he wrote the books because it seems to very much disagree with what I see in them. So I don't want to have that impression in my head forever when reading the books, unlike Neil Gaiman, who seems from his blog to be quite personable and as quirky and as interesting as his writing suggests. But I'm going anyway because I really want a signed book, hee. And I've never gotten to do the fannish thing before.

Loot from Barnes and Noble: Anne Bishop's The House of Gaian, which hopefully will be better than the middle book of the trilogy; Teresa Medeiros' Once an Angel; the last fairy tale anthology edited by Datlow and Windling. Black something Ivory something? I always get the titles confused. Splurged and got it even though it was in trade because I love the anthology series very much.

Drooled over: Robin McKinley's Sunshine, which I very desperately want to read, but will wait patiently until a) the library copy is up for grabs b) the bookstore gets one or c) it comes out in paper. Generally this all happens at the same time, go fig. Also, saw the new Bujold book Paladin of Souls and really really really wanted to get it. The description looked interesting, the cover is quite gorgeous, then there was the added factor of a blurb from DWJ and several friends already talking about Bujold... didn't get it though, am still waiting. I'm pretty stingy with books (at least the non-mass-market ones) because I would be so broke if I weren't. If I don't see it soon in my bookstore with the employee discount, I'm probably going to end up splurging...

I haven't been on LJ lately because I've been buried in Jaqueline Carey's Kushiel's Avatar, which I finally got from the library. ( More here )

And now, onto the beginning of The Crystal City: ( here )

( Alias up to Phase One )