I was a saint; I wed the breaking dawn

click the cover to download

( Tracklisting )

Read the awesome story I received here!

OK SO. I have ALL THE FEELINGS right now, what better time to make my first post since before Christmas? NO BETTER.

1. I got a hair cut! It's the shortest it's ever been. I like it a lot better now than I did right after it made me miss my bus to the...

2. FANDOM PARTY! On Wednesday alpheratz invited me up to DC for her party, and I looked at Megabus fares and decided I could swing it. I'd been pretty blah since Black Friday & the start of crazytimes at work AND I hadn't seen anybody in DC since the Panic tour.

(Of course I then missed the bus & had to drive up. Pluses: singing out loud, staying later. Minuses: driving, gas. After some reflection I've decided the pluses win.)

And it was a great time, full of unicorn poo and singing and funny-not-scary pirates and Grant Morrison the selkie king and people I kind of love!

3. My Chem released a video for Kids from Yesterday and it is full of their faces! Best yet, they did it while I was with other fans & could watch it over and over and smile extra-wide!

4. SHERLOCK ::flails:: ::flails more::

I am not actually coherent about Sherlock right now, let me get back to you after I've watched this season again.

5. The future, for it is full of awesome! I will be in DC again two weekends from now and will get an intrepidcat. Then on February 4th kinetikatrue, v_greyson, and cinco are visiting with spuffyduds and queue to see The Mountain Goats, and then fun. releases their album and goes on tour, then Bitchin' Party, then more fun. tour...basically, this spring=love.

movies I've watched recently: Tangled, Practical Magic, Pirates of Penzance

Hello there, totally amazing author with brilliant taste! We were matched on one of my favorite books, so I think it's safe to assume you're pretty great. Thank you so much for the fic--I cannot wait to read it!

I apologize for only choosing book fandoms, and two series by the same author on top of that. This is my first Yuletide and it's possible that I may have gotten a little carried away.

You...probably can’t tell, as my web presence is pretty locked down, but I read very widely and love all sorts of fic. I especially love worldbuilding, myths & fairy tales, and using old tropes in new ways. I would strongly prefer your story not contain rape/non-consent, incest, or major character death. I also have a mild-to-moderate embarrassment squick, which can be best described by the motts.

EDIT: I also want to add that my requests are in no particular order, and the amount I wrote has more to do with me frantically trying to finish the letter than anything else. I love all of these books SO MUCH and will be thrilled with stories written about any of them.

( On to the requests! )

Thank you again for offering one of these fandoms & writing me a sure-to-be-awesome story. I hope you have a great time writing and a wonderful Yuletide!

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth and has comments there. Feel free to comment either here or there using OpenID.

I also saw Panic! At the Disco in Norfolk! I am just kind of faily and took a couple weeks to write it up. That is because this is GIANT, omg. You can skip to the pictures if you want, I totally will not judge.

( words and also parentheticals! )

( pictures! )

Again, there are some more pictures on flickr.

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth and has comments there. Feel free to comment either here or there using OpenID.

So I went to see Panic! At the Disco twice last week! Yep. And I'm breaking out of this hiatus I seem to have fallen into to post about it. At length. My apologies!

( words )

Now for the pictures: ( pictures! )

There are a few more at my flickr here.


OH PS: "Eric" is actually Evan Winiker of Steel Train, but I still have no clue who the other guy is other than "dude covering for Jack Antonoff." So. If anyone recognizes him, do please chime in to assuage my burning curiosity.

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth and has comments there. Feel free to comment either here or there using OpenID.

It has been a while since my last post and yet I still don't have a normal post to make. In lieu of that have a list of some things that have been happening.

* My birthday was a week ago today! I didn't post then because I was in a frenzy of baking and cookery. I made bread and a fruit tart, both firsts. The Joy of Cooking book is sneaky in that it teaches you how to make a custard without mentioning that it's a custard until the last line. I had finished it by that point and so there was no freaking out. I see what you did there, Joy of Cooking.

* I have been coveting All the Shoes. I want to get these boots but I think they would come up too high on my calf and rub at my knee. I bought a really cute pair of flats at ModCloth, though, and I think I'm going to DSW tomorrow to see what they have in the way of awesome pumps.

* A coyote ran in front of my car on the way home from work the other night. At least, I'm pretty sure it was a coyote--I'm going by the tail and general color because up until the tail I thought it was a deer. It was in a rural-edging-on-suburban area, but the dogs around there are really well trained and stay in their yards. (I wrote the next part of this and then realized I never actually said I didn't hit the coyote. Let the record state that I definitely did not.)

* I'm going to start doing support over the phone next week, and I get to record our "press 1 for yadayada, press 2 for &c" message. My awesome boss has suggested that we record the message in Klingon and Elvish, too. As none of us speak Klingon or Elvish we're probably going to advertise at Dragon*Con.

It's leaked! This is not the original leak from Strikegently and the Panic LJ, because that copy contains a slur inserted by some random. I shaved it out of this copy, so it's missing a few seconds of Brendon holding a note around 2:55. If you want the original leak I can send it to you.

Verdict: I love this, and can't wait for the album. It's extremely dancy, which was predictable from the clip, and more power pop (although I hate that term) than rock and will be stuck in my head for days, I'm sure. The strings and bells in the intro and verses are a nice counterpoint to the driving chorus and sinister nature of the song. I think that Brendon's voice is well-suited to that aspect of it, too. (A good example of this is on "assess the sins she's paid for," and again on the last line of the song.) And is that anguished moaning I hear in the background at the end? The song's so layered it's hard to hear some of the individual pieces.

I take it back about the strings--I think they're very tip-toey. Ominous tip-toeing. The bells are still counterpoint, they sound like a music box to me, so lost innocence? There's this quiet urgency to the verses, with a quick and steady bass drum, which drops away after the build to the chorus.

The lyrics aren't gonna win a Nobel Prize or anything, but I think they're comparable to Fever-era Ryan Ross. I am a little worried that they're emulating Ross here, consciously or not, because of the whole heavy drinking, life of sin, selling sex thing. ( Here they are, for reference: )

This is like ominous cabaret stuff, but still completely different to Fever (for me) and the bottom line is that I love it and I'm thrilled that they've come out with something this nuanced and complex after TYV released Take a Vacation! and Jon Walker did his solo songs, because, much as I love those guys, they said some pretty shitty, mean things about Spencer & Brendon's songwriting abilities and this single, and hopefully the album, is proving them so very wrong.

This used to be a free download for Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back but now it is not.

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth and has comments there. Feel free to comment either here or there using OpenID.

One: Megan Whalen Turner can do no wrong.

Two: I will always be surprised that her books are shelved in juvenile and YA at my library. The main characters aren't in the right age ranges, and the subject matter gets pretty heavy. I read them as a kid without suffering lasting scars, but as a marketing move it seems incredibly strange.b

I have so much to post about that it's actually overwhelming, but I'm going to ignore all of that right now! I will attempt show recaps for TYV and Empires, but that will be, uh, later. Sometime.

But I got an awesome card for au_bingo!

( here it is! )