my heart is a glorious machine;

So, I've realised an interesting fact about myself. Most of you will probably not be surprised.

When I enter a new fandom, or am rediscovering an old one, I attempt to connect it to Eliot somehow. Um, yes. While I was waiting to get sleepy last night, I paged through my Complete Eliot and decided that Angel (so far the most likely candidate for Elioting) might find certain passages of Ash-Wednesday and The Hollow Men rather apt. A bit of Rhapsody on a Windy Night, too. Um, yes. I have a feeling it is too late; therapy cannot do me any good now. (But just look at them, will you? I mean really.) And hey,

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

-- reminds me of Simon Tam rather a lot. Oh dear. I haven't really found anyone in any fandom who suits The Waste Land, although I can see River quoting:

A woman drew her long black hair out tight     
And fiddled whisper music on those strings     
And bats with baby faces in the violet light     
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall     
And upside down in air were towers     
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours     
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

And most of you lot know that T.S. Eliot is Remus Lupin's favourite poet. (Shut up. He is. Look at Preludes! And Prufrock! They were practically written about him! And, um, I actually possess about half a draft of an entire Remus-fic based on Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Yes.) And that Four Quartets was written after Mr Eliot took a spin in the TARDIS (definitely post-Time War, because there are references all over the place). And ressie_noldo and I decided once that the Weialala Leia are an alien race, but that's beside the point.

So, this is Banui's brain on, er, madness. Yes. Going away now.

(Stuff about Life later, maybe. I've been having a few days half-out of the world, which is nice, but I also feel about three times as absent-minded as usual, and I've always been terrifically absent-minded.)

I really am going to do that Deathly Hallows response post, because there is actually a lot to talk about besides How It Broke My Heart And Why I Am Not Resigned, but I keep worrying I'm going to forget something ("I've only read the book twice!), and then the less silly bit of myself says very sternly, "Banui, it's a response, not a ruddy thesis paper" and so the two sides of me sort of bicker amicably for a while which makes it really difficult to actually, you know, concentrate on anything useful.

Anyway, 'tis the season for Great Thinky Meta Posts, now that the early frenzy is mostly over, and here is my first contribution, because I have been mulling this over for some time, and it's got a lot to do with my fic-verse, and I think if I start writing out my thoughts maybe some of it will come out clearly enough that I can start to write about it. I keep trying to write fic about Deathly Hallows, but I run up against this great block that says, "are you sure that this is how you want to portray this?" Like, guys, I haven't even really explored how and when Remus and Tonks actually fell in love, other than that it was sometime during OotP, and I'd like there to be something interesting involved, some sort of -- at least mild -- adventure, something other than mucking about in Grimmauld Place and keeping Sirius from going mad.


...I have apparently lost the ability to post about anything not related to Harry Potter now. This is a sign of dire things I am sure.

OH PLAGUES AND PLAGUES I MISSED REMUS' BIRTHDAY. 

I AM A ROTTEN FANGIRL.

(Actually, there are ninety minutes left, but that hardly amounts to anything. I missed Aragorn's birthday, too, but the fic I was contemplating turned out to have even less plot than my fics usually do, so I gave up on it. Seriously, it was about Aragorn and Halbarad in the woods eating stuff. Or learning to cook. Or something.) So, um, happy birthday, Remus. Depressing fic ought to be forthcoming. I've been mucking about with that Rhapsody on a Windy Night fic for quite some time.

So, I'm going to have to finish one of my fifteen and a half Remus!fics have a go at some kind of belated celebration. I feel guilty. Then again, I forgot Ian's birthday in November, which is really pathetic, seeing as I made it up and all. (It's the ninth, because...I wanted a Lost number. Shut up.) 

We visited Leandra again today (hopefully our last trip to Pittsburgh; if all goes well she'll be at our home hospital by midweek or earlier), and took a long detour at Borders, where I bought nothing because what I did want was four times the amount I would pay if I bought it used on Amazon Marketplace or at Rosie's Bookshop in town or I hadn't read yet and was rather keen on, but I rarely buy books that I haven't read yet without a great deal of trust in the author. I got to touch Ysabel and The Ultimate Sandman and The Essential Rilke (!) and wasn't able to spend thirty seconds in the young adult section without wanting to run away, and I think I want to read Neverwhere rather badly now. I also nicked one of the (free) ancticipatory Deathly Hallows bookmarks. I totally love that even the advertising is getting into the whole 'Snape: Good or Evil?' thing: fandom is taking over the world.

Also, Best Time Ever = driving through Pittsburgh in the rain, blaring Steeleye Span, and debating with the siblings as to what the TARDIS noise sounds like. :D We have this family ritual dating back to my toddlerhood which involves us pointing out imaginary sea-life when driving through a tunnel--"oh, look, there's an octopus!" and suchlike (I've taken to saying things like "the Giant Squid!" and "a bunch of krakken!" lately), so we're driving through the tunnel and I go "hey, look, a police box!", and lo, the fandom joke was gotten, and Heidi said, "there's the Doctor! and Rose!" and I smiled smugly with the knowledge of converts made. (And then my brother says, "Rosebud?" and I says, "NO.", and he says, "Her last name should be Bud", and I says, "Nobody is that cruel, even Rose's crazy mother," and that was that. Citizen Kane jokes are the new black in my house, despite my brother having only seen the very beginning and remembering it very well for some reason. I think it's because his Robosapien says "Rosebud!" when you turn it off, which was the best and nerdiest thing ever, especially because we all, except for Heidi, got it. So then I said, "look! it's Orson Welles on a sled!" and my brother gave me the blankest look possible.)

The drive home consisted very much of thick, rolling fog, the sort of fog one rarely finds outside of films (and England), and I kept thinking that we were going to drive out into some barren moor in an alternate Victorian universe or be spirited away by the Unseelie Court, but alas, nothing out of the ordinary happened, which was extremely disappointing.