Actually got out of the house today and went to see Knives Out, which I was very glad was still playing. I thought it was entertaining and I am glad I saw it although simultaneously I feel like the internet kind of overhyped it a little -- I'd seen people saying that it was this generation's Clue, so I was expecting more actual humor, but I thought the mystery plot itself was entertaining, as was Daniel Craig's accent and Chris Evans clearly having an immense amount of fun playing an asshole. (Lysimache does not think it followed mystery conventions as much as she would have liked but she's pickier about mysteries than I am.) Also could have done with less vomit and spiders, so if you dislike vomit and/or spiders you should be warned that there is some of both.

The movie also came with a very weird assortment of trailers, like it didn't know what kind of movie we wanted to see. I am still confused about why the trailer soundtrack for the movie about the plucky Brits of WWI was (a very cut-up) arrangement of "Wayfaring Stranger," because, yeah, I would totally pick a very famous American spiritual for a movie with, among other things, no Americans.

Up next: We see Cats for Lysimache's birthday, I suppose. And then probably at some point a Star War.

Also I finally got a haircut again and at some point this week I need to brave the local comics store and ask them if I can get on a pull list because I am apparently too late to get Iron Man 2020 from Marvel and the current Iron Man subscription I was on doesn't roll over into it, as I had assumed.

Read this entry on Dreamwidth || comments

Today I got a haircut!

What I Just Finished Reading

Nothing! On the plus side, uh, my Cap-IM RBB draft just hit 40,000 words. So that's what I've been doing. And I have a posting date! May 27! I am still not done writing! (The thing that cracks me up is that posting is, theoretically, all of May and so far no one has elected a posting date earlier than May 13. Well, at least it's not just me.)

What I'm Reading Now

Comics! I was SO VERY EXCITED that New Avengers #33, the last issue, was supposed to come out today (like, the thought that actually got me out of bed was "if I get up I can read New Avengers!") and then... apparently it got pushed back to next week. (Marvel.com still says it releases today.) Boo. Although I guess that way it can come out the same day as the last issue of Avengers and me and the approximately five people who enjoy this run can read the whole ending all at once and make loud screeching noises. Which is what I'm planning on doing. I am way more excited about that than about Age of Ultron.

Anyway! Comics I actually bought:

All-New X-Men #40: The woman at the counter was like, "Oh, you're buying the controversial issue," and, well, yeah. I had to know. For those of you who may not be familiar with the controversy, in this issue, we find out that Bobby Drake is gay. (Well, a young teenage Bobby Drake from the 60s who time-traveled to the present, because comics.) Bobby Drake (Iceman) is someone fandom has been slashing for a long, long time, by which I mean at least the late 90s -- the first slash story I ever wrote was Bobby/Remy slash, okay? -- and he's the one who kind of gets coded queer in the first set of X-Men movies due to the "have you tried not being a mutant?" coming-out conversation. So on the one hand I am thrilled at the representation and I feel so vindicated, because, man, the other big slash ship was Rictor/Shatterstar and they're also canon! (The OTHER other big slash ship was Charles/Erik, and, uh, no word there yet. Everything else was, I think, canon het. 90s Marvel fandom was a very different place.)

On the other hand -- which you know if you are aware of the controversy -- the way it is handled is really kind of lousy and involves Jean Grey basically telling Bobby he's gay because she can read his mind. I will say that the leaked panels I had seen on Tumblr prior to reading the issue elided a bunch of the conversation, including the part where Bobby expresses discomfort at Jean basically non-consensually outing him, which both makes it better and worse because (a) at least Bendis knows this is a lousy thing to do to someone, but (b) then if he knows it's a lousy thing to do to someone, why did he write it like that? Sure, they're all kids, whatever, it is a plausibly tactless thing to do, and the entire conversation is plausible, but there aren't so many queer superheroes that we're at a place where telling a coming-out story like this makes sense, I think, because there are so few and I want them to be good and happy and positive, you know? So in that sense, yeah, I wish for metatextual reasons that it had been a more idealized scenario, but within the text I think it makes a lot of sense.

But back to the first hand, BOBBY DRAKE IS GAY and this is everything I wanted when I was an emo confused teenager who didn't know why I was identifying so hard with all the queer protagonists in fiction and thinking girls were pretty. So, you know, representation. Aww, yeah, Bobby. I never imagined it could come true. (At the time my options in superhero comics for queer superheroes were, uh, Mark Millar's Authority run. I read it anyway.)

Yeah, yeah, probably I should take this post to Tumblr instead. Whatever. Maybe I will. I don't know. I have feelings. I just don't want to fight about it on Tumblr, which is what Tumblr seems to be doing.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #4: Once again, if you are not reading this, you should, because Squirrel Girl fights Galactus on the moon and discusses gender-neutral pronouns with him. I might need an icon of the "I did not come here to discuss linguistics" speech bubble.

Also when I bought my comics I got a free-with-purchase Avengers magazine, which (judging by the bits I flipped through) looks reasonably entertaining and has a bunch of stuff about early canon and kind of makes me want to write fic about Cap's Kooky Quartet.

What I'm Reading Next

Dunno. Ask me after I finish writing this fic. (Which is clearly never.) lysimache just bought a book about Roman slavery that looks interesting so I might steal it and read it at some point.

Read this entry on Dreamwidth || comments

Am clearly still in the Everything Is Avengers And Nothing Hurts stage of fandom. (Except current canon. I think current comics canon is clearly getting ready to hurt a lot. Possibly this Wednesday. Also WTF why is there even a Dyson sphere? Maybe I should just read backcanon.) The amount of feelings I am having is getting a little embarrassing. I may or may not have spent the past two evenings retagging my Pinboard so that I can find stories by continuity, because I apparently really prefer comicsverse Cap/Iron Man shipping. Why did no one ever tell me the comics ship was so gooood?

(Not that I think I can write it. I don't know. Still too much canon. Still wandering slowly through Brubaker's Captain America run. I think possibly I should just have stopped with the death issue, because I am not so much enjoying the treatment of Sharon. But, hey, on the plus side, uh... I am pleased and kind of surprised that much of Batroc's dialogue is actually in French? And I think I might like the Bucky/Natasha.)

Also I may or may not have purchased an actual trade of the Civil War arc, because I finally found a Barnes & Noble that had it. (The guy in line in front of me wanted to compliment me on my taste in comics.)

I really need to not read Avengers and write Sutcliff Swap instead. Right. right. Soooon.

Non-fannishly: I got all my hair hacked off again, yay. lysimache plundered the classics collection of one of the local used bookstores; she is currently reading a book about the comet of 44 BC and how Chinese astronomers apparently also observed it. I am looking forward to when she gets to the book Latine Cantemus, which is, yes, exactly what it sounds like. She got me a Homeric Greek textbook written by some Jesuits (which isn't the dialect I thought Jesuits would be into, but okay). It isn't exactly the dialect I wanted to learn, either, but it is colorful and friendly and full of pictures, as opposed to, you know, asking you to translate hundreds of sentences that all seem to involve phrases like "the just man." (My impression of Greek is that Greek has never met a substantive it didn't adore.)

Anyway. There's that. Possibly I should get a comics icon.

Read this entry on Dreamwidth || comments

I saw Down With Love last night. It was very cute and campy. Sort of like Touch of Pink or Trick, but with fewer gay boys.

For lunch I had a panini with chicken, pesto, mozzarella, and tomato aioli. Best sandwich evar.

I want HP7 to hurry up and be out already.

Also, I feel like maybe I should mention that it's been probably about two years since I last shampooed my hair, which is kind of cool. I follow the Curly Girl method, which claims that the reason curly hair is often frizzy (or, alternatively, greasy) is that shampoos contain detergent that strips your hair of all its natural oils, causing either frizziness (because your hair is minus natural oils) or greasiness (because your hair has overcompensated for this condition by producing extra oil).

So basically the idea is that you don't shampoo and instead clean your hair by scrubbing at your scalp and hair with conditioner, which gets it just as clean. Really. (Also you can't use conditioners with anything ending in -cone, because silicone's not gonna wash out and apparently eventually makes your hair dull. This means sticking to the $1 stuff at the grocery store, generally.)

So, yeah. Probably that's enough about my hair.

Now I think I shall go read the first of the Vlad Taltos books I got from the library. I hope they're good.

The "Fresh Mountain Strawberry" variety of Suave Naturals conditioner, which, according to the ingredients list, contains actual strawberry extract, smells exactly like bananas. Bananas. Not strawberries. It is the craziest thing ever.

I don't think I've bought that scent before, so I don't know if it's just this bottle, but it is definitely bananas. I wonder if I should write them and complain.

Remember how I said it was snowing yesterday? It started snowing at, like, 10 am yesterday, and it's *still* snowing Saturday night. It's not snowing much, and it has stopped briefly a couple times, but basically it's still snowing. I want spring. Please?

I really enjoyed last night's BSG much more than the one last week, which I didn't think was funny at all. The prophecy stuff is interesting, and it was nice to see Starbuck strategize. And I actually, um, liked the action scenes. And the president is still cool. Have I mentioned how I liked her?

Today I slept in, and then we went out for bagels. I watched the DVD of Titan AE I got a couple weeks ago, and it wasn't the best movie ever, but it was definitely worth my $5. We went and got Thai food, and mine was really good. Who knew chicken and pineapple and cashews went well with chili sauce? And then we got ice cream from Herrell's, and mmm, ice cream, and the cute girl was working there. Aww, cute girl. (Unfortunately, I never really got the chance to get over the "Ohmygod, she's so cute! Can't think of anything to say!" tongue-tied reaction in middle school like everyone else, so I am occasionally rendered speechless by random pretty girls. Sigh.)

I want to cut my hair. I've been wanting to cut it for at least a month now. I want to cut it all off and have cute short hair like m_shell. I just have so much hair, and it's hard to take care of. It tangles horribly (brushing my hair usually makes me cry), it comes out in big tangly clumps in the shower, and it's all broken in back. The product I use only helps the frizziness sometimes. If I cut it all off, it'll be easier to take care of, it won't hurt, and hey, I might look gayer and hopefully not like I'm in high school anymore. Besides, I always just put my hair back anyway, and if no one's going to see my hair down it might as well be interestingly short.

But I've never had really short hair, and the one time I had above-shoulder-length hair it was a big puffball disaster -- though at that time I hadn't yet discovered the magic of hair product and Not Brushing Curly Hair. And last night I dreamed I did cut my hair and they shaved off the bottom half, like, to my scalp, and I was very distraught and kept insisting that I didn't want it totally shaved off. So, bleh, hair angst. Plus, I promised my dad when I came out to him that I wouldn't cut all my hair off. (It was, like, the first thing he asked.) And I probably would just end up looking like I've got my mother's favorite short hair cut, which I don't want. I at least would want cute short hair. Like, those cute cuts that are long on the top.

Wow, this was an awfully gay post. And I promise to reply to comments soon.

So I went and dyed my hair red. Well, Jen did it for me. It's non-permanent, so it'll probably be gone in a few days, considering that a large amount of it washed out already. My hair didn't end up completely red; I seem to have gotten reddish highlights, which is cool. I like. Plus, because of it Jen keeps complimenting my hair and petting it constantly, and who doesn't like that? *mmms*

Having finished Lemony Snicket's book 1, I bought books 2 and 3 today. Man, there are a lot of Harry Potter knockoffs in the YA section. I'm actually quite enjoying Lemony Snicket so far. Yes, they're very much below my reading level, but the narrator is engaging and funny and who doesn't like miserable-orphan stories? Besides, the author's name is Lemony Snicket. I know that's not his real name, but still. Snicket snicket snicket.

I can probably read one of 'em in half an hour; this is gonna be a quick and expensive series to own. I want to read them before I see the movie. I had been wanting to read them, and the movie gave me a good excuse. So, dude, I could theoretically read them in an hour and run out to see the movie. Mmm, movie.

I didn't know that my fingers could swell up from the cold. I was outside helping scrape the car off, and when I got inside I noticed that my fingers were very very puffy and sore and red. That was freaky. But they've gone back to normal now. I am relieved.

The experiment with hair-straightening product yesterday was, um, unsuccessful, I am sad to report. My hair is rather curly, and lysimache worked patiently on it for, like, an hour with the hairdryer and about half a tube of hair product. I had very nice almost-entirely-straight flat hair with only a bit of wave to it... for about thirty seconds. Then it decided to be as poofy as it normally is when I brush it out, which is rather a lot. It kept telling me how it wanted to be free, free, unshackled by the bonds of hair product! Even hair spray would not hold it! I give up. I don't want to iron it. But at least it was nice for a minute, right?

And then we saw the pirate movie with m_shell. Arrrrrrrrrrrr! This time we stayed for the scene after the credits, which I found disappointing. Sigh. But also arrrrr.

Today we went to the bookstore, the pizza place, and the grocery store (which had pink lady apples! Yummy yummy yum!). Jen has been singing various requiem masses at me all day. It's kind of cute, except the parts about fiery death. She does indeed sing very very very nicely, though her dog has a tendency to howl along with her.

Tomorrow: hopefully once again to the Atlantic Ocean (I am told the proper phrase is "down the shore") this time with m_shell and her sister. Ocean and junk food, hooray!

It's very odd to decide at midnight that I want ice cream and then be able to go out and get ice cream. I [heart] my girlfriend. We also ended up with donuts and bagels and Hostess Sno-balls, which are the most disgusting thing ever, what with the cupcake and marshmallow and shredded coconut. So naturally Jen likes them, as we have no foods in common. But we did end up agreeing on plain bagels and chocolate frosted donuts and Edy's M&M cookies and cream ice cream, which still weirds me out because that brand is supposed to be Dreyer's, I swear.

So then we ate these things and watched a tape of the Homicide ep where Kay visits her family. Kay is cool. I want her hair. Then I managed to sleep through all the landscaping in the morning. Go me. Then we saw the HL ep with Nick Lea as a bank robber. Hee. He's cute. I want one. And a Kay too, please. Though perhaps not at the same time.

And soon we are going to see the Pirate movie again, this time with m_shell. Arrrrrrr. And I bought one of those round brushes and some goop that claims to straighten curly hair, so I'm going to see if I can have temporarily straight hair -- brushing it out will remove a lot of the curl, yes, but it also makes it stick, like, a foot on all sides of my head. Yay hair product. Arrr, pirates.

I think I want to dye my hair. I think I want to dye it blue. For a short period of time, just to see what it looks like. I wonder if my hair's dark enough that I'd have to bleach it first.

I have never wanted to dye my hair before. I disturb myself sometimes.

Wow, it's already midnight. Guess I'm not gonna get a chance to watch Exotica tonight after all.