rsadelle

According to the dates on the file, I worked on this over three weeks in February-March of this year. What's fascinating to me, reading it now, is how many of the plot points I reused in You Have My Heart (in your hands).

I think the last paragraph is actually the first part of the story I wrote.


( Chris, Steve, and a baby. )

Title: Starting Today
Author: Ruth Sadelle Alderson
Pairing: Chris/Aldis
Rating: FRM
Word Count: 3300 words
Disclaimer: Made up.
Summary: On the seventh hole, Chris showed Aldis how to swing again because he somehow hadn't gotten it on the first six, and Chris was starting to lose his patience.
( Notes, v. story origin )
Notes, v. real places: Bandon Dunes is a real place. So are the Prehistoric Gardens. Everything I know about them I learned from the internet.
Notes, v. thanks: Thank you to schuyler for reading this over to make sure I didn't make any egregious golf errors. Any remaining errors are my own.


( Starting Today )

Title: The Popsicle Man
Author: Ruth Sadelle Alderson
Pairing: Chris/Steve (past Steve/Danneel)
Rating: FRAO
Word Count: 3000
Disclaimer: Completely made up.
Summary: "Look! Ice cream!" Kayla tugged at Steve's hand. "Please, Daddy, please can we get some?" AU.
Notes: This started as a writing exercise from my writing group (I had the prompts "look," "full house," and "plant," which became bushes in the end). I eventually realized I wanted to write the beginning and something that's near the end, but not all the intervening parts.


( The Popsicle Man )

When You Need To Do Something Right
If you ever feel like you need to have someone tell you you've done something right, I can't suggest a more effective way than writing something for an anonymous fic meme. I wrote four last week (some at anon_lovefest, some at jbkinkmeme), and it was awesome. First of all, writing anonymously meant I didn't feel the same pressure to write something good. Secondly, I didn't think the first two I did were particularly good, and yet people really liked them, and feedback for anonymous fic turns out to be more of a thrill than feedback for other fic. Thirdly, one of the things I wrote was perhaps the most fun thing to write ever (and I fell in love with it and might claim and post it here too).

Academic Overtraining, or, In Which I Want Sources Cited
The Bandom overview at crack_van says, "Bandom was built on the backs of a million picspams and primers," which seems to be true, and I've read quite a few now. But a primer is not, itself, a source, and I find myself annoyed when they don't cite their sources. I greatly appreciate riorhapsody's The Academy Is... Ridiculous Primer for citing sources. I may have spent too much time writing papers in my college days. (To be honest with you, I'm so committed to proper source citations that I was really tempted to footnote "Not Ever" with the sources for each actual event in the story.)

Serious Gabe Saporta Is Serious (And Hot)
One of the best things about Cobra Starship's album coming out next week is that they're doing a lot of interviews. There are two I've liked recently because they have Gabe being serious about music, which is awesome. First is this one from MTV, which is better if you watch the video than if you read it because the content is not as interesting as Gabe and Alex's attitudes. I love how excited Gabe gets about the interviewer picking up on the influences in their music. (He misses one, though - when they're talking about the oohs on "Fold Your Hands Child," Gabe says that's all Ryland, which, duh! It's totally This Is Ivy League.) Secondly, Gabe and Ryland did an oddly serious interview with MySpace Music. I mean, really, who's serious when talking to MySpace Music? One of the interesting moments is that he's not just serious about music - he talks about "selling out" and says, "The whole concept of selling out is completely nonsensical and asinine in a capitalist system. That's a bigger question." Smart is so sexy.

Christian Kane, I Still Love You Best
John Rogers is doing weekly Leverage Q&As, and in the one about last week's ep, he told us:

Eliot as a teddy bear? No. But Chris is both great with kids, and works well with kid actors (kudos to our guest star for this week, he was really fantastic). And kids basically treat Chris like Batman.

My life needs eighty thousand adorable Chris-with-kids fics now. (I was just reading through unfinished/unposted fic on my hard drive this week, and I have two. But someone else should write some.)

On Writing About Music and Musicians
I always feel inadequate when I try to write about music - which is problematic since my fandoms of the moment are all musician-based. I don't really know much about music, although I have gotten much better at finding/counting the beat in a piece of music. I end up not writing much about music itself or the making of it. I keep thinking that if I'm writing about people who define their lives by music, then I should write about music, too, at least in relation to their lives, but I don't know what I'm doing.

On Writing Self-Indulgently
It seems like everything I write these days is horribly self-indulgent. But then I keep catching myself and thinking, hey, isn't all fan fic essentially self indulgent? Isn't the great thing about fan fic that we don't have to deal with the setup and blahblahblah and get to skip straight to the fun parts? And so what if my current fun parts are all overblown romanticism and cuddling?

Panic! Split: The Story I Most Want
I want someone to write the Panic! origin story where it's all about how much Spencer loves music (and maybe also Brendon). I keep thinking that the fanon mythology (as gathered from reading fic) is all about how Spencer loves Ryan, and that the band was about getting Ryan, and then Brendon, what they want/need, but it's never about Spencer wanting the band and music for their own sake.

Panic! Split: Rec
What would a roundup of fannish things sort of post be without a rec? The rec is overnighter's "Mise en Place," which is a Brendon/Spencer story. I should forewarn you that the first thing I left in my feedback comment was, "OUCH. (In a good way.)" It's well written, it has a hopeful ending, and she does an amazing job of giving Brendon emotional connections to food.

Feedback: Leaving and Reading
I've been trying to be better about leaving feedback in recent times. This is largely because I found myself sending recs or talking about fic and throwing out one-sentence reasons things were good, and then thinking, "I could tell the author that, too." Obviously authors like feedback, but I also wonder if other readers ever read feedback other people leave on a story. I do sometimes page down through the comments to see if anything jumps out at me, either in the comments or in who left them.

I've gotten a lot of the music I've been listening to over the last couple of months via fic soundtracks and other mixes people have offered up for download, so this is something in the way of giving back.

Download (If you're from the future and this link no longer works, leave a comment and I'll reupload it.)

I have no idea if you have any interest in reading me talking about music. I'm not even sure if I have any interested in reading me talking about music. But that's what I'm going to do in this entry, even though I don't really have the musical vocabulary to be particularly technical or precise about it.

First, a note about the name of my playlist. You see, a while back, I thought, "Hey, I want to listen to a couple of miscellaneous songs," and I threw them into a playlist that I named "Z - Playlist of the Day" with the intention that I would move things on and off it as I wanted to listen to them. (The Z was so that it would be at the bottom of the list and I could just hit the end key to get to it.) But then I put those six songs in an order and kept listening to it, so I didn't want to mess with it. Then I had a different bunch of songs I wanted to listen to and I had yet to rename the other playlist, so this one got named "z2" to keep it at the bottom of the list.

This also started out longer, but then I couldn't listen to the whole thing before I had to go to bed, so I cut some songs. It's now 57.9 minutes of music. (Thank you, iTunes, for the precision.) The track listing below is in alphabetical order by artist as sorted by iTunes; I've been listening to it on shuffle.

The connective tissue of this playlist is something like things I'm fannish about at the minute, but there's also a theme of voice (mostly in terms of physical voices, but at least one in the more metaphorical sense).

And now the annotated track list.

( Boss DJ (acoustic live) - Brendon Urie )

( One of Those Nights (feat. Patrick Stump and Brendon Urie) - The Cab )

( Good Girls Go Bad - Cobra Starship )

( Hot Mess - Cobra Starship )

( The World Has Its Shine (But I Would Drop It On A Dime) - Cobra Starship )

( Spit the Dark - Empires )

( Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year - Fall Out Boy )

( 4th Period: Clothes Off!! - Gym Class Heroes )

( Burnin' Up - Jonas Brothers )

( Turn Right (Live) - Jonas Brothers )

( Free Fallin' - Jonas Brothers )

( JoBros Music and Introduction Resource Interlude )

( Use Somebody - Kings Of Leon )

( Keep the Mood - Mark Rose )

( New Perspective - Panic! At The Disco )

( I Wanna Be Your Lover - Patrick Stump )

( Should've Said No (feat. Jonas Brothers) - Taylor Swift )

I've decided that today should be a five things Friday. So prompt or ask me whatever you want. This can be a fic prompt (five pick-up lines that didn't work on Jensen) or a getting to know you question (five movies I love) or anything else you can think to ask (five alternate uses for pipe cleaners). If you want to ask/prompt more than one five things, uh, thing, I'm cool with that. Anyone who gets their prompt/question in before 7 pm Pacific Time will get an answer before I go to bed (unless it gets so long it needs to be its own thing, but if that happens, I'll tell you about it).

I'm writing a Chris/Steve space AU, and I made a character decision about Chris. It made sense that if space AU Chris likes heat, enclosed spaces, and higher gravity, then he would like being held down. And then I've continued that character piece farther into the story. I even changed the casting of one of the other characters to go with it.

A long time ago, there was thread on some X-Files fic list or newsgroup (I wasn't kidding when I said it was a long time ago) called "No Mary Sues for Alex?" which tackled the relative dearth of Krycek/Mary Sue fic. I remember the conclusion being that people tended to just make Krycek their Mary Sue. I've been thinking about that as I've been working my way through this space AU.

(This is an interesting intersection with my continuing doubts about writing Chris. I don't think my Chris is anything like real Chris. [I think there's only one or two authors writing a Chris who's anything like real Chris.] On the other hand, I have to listen to real Chris with the aural equivalent of peeking through my fingers, so I'm not sure I would want to read real Chris.)

I've also been thinking of my favorite quote about writing about sex. It's from Tony Kushner, who says, "It is impossible to talk or write about sex without revealing too much of yourself. Whereas conversely it is possible I think to have sex and reveal nothing of yourself whatsoever."

I had an interesting experience with this. norwich36 and I exchange fic recs all the time. A lot of them are things with interesting plots or that are amusing, but a fair number of them are about things that are hot. We also had a relatively involved discussion about BDSMy stories way back on my post about the first J2 stories I read. She's also read some of my fic. I give you all this background so you know that we already talk about this kind of thing all the time. Then we started talking erotica ebooks over email, and I wrote a long email to her about the ebooks I've read. I was reading it over before I sent it, and I thought, "It's a good thing she knows me pretty well already, because this is pretty revealing." It was almost uncomfortably revealing. I think there are two things that made it so uncomfortable. First of all, ebooks take more of an investment than fic. They cost money, and you're stuck with them, so you have to choose carefully. Secondly, it was startling to look at the list all at once and see the pattern, especially in the things I bought myself (as opposed to the things I got from other people). Almost all the things I really liked, and a large number of the things I bought were BDSM or BDSMy. And yet, I've written a fair amount about kink, so I'm not sure why this particular email made me feel quite so exposed.

A Confession

Oh, no, wait, maybe I do at least know why I keep thinking/talking about this now. It's been weeks since I last wrote anything on either of the novels I'm supposed to be writing because I quit my job to be a writer. I've only admitted that to maybe two other people. If I tell the truth about my penchant for kink fic, does that balance out my not-telling about my writing?

Happy Leverage Day! For those of you who don't know: Leverage starts filming today. I think this is worth celebrating. With threesome fic.

(I also, you may have noticed, decided it's time to admit that all of this stuff I've been writing really is fic and needs real headers. Eventually I'm going to have to make a master post, aren't I?)

Title: Under the Influence
Author: Ruth Sadelle Alderson
Pairing: Christian Kane/Aldis Hodge/J. August Richards
Rating: FRAO
Word Count: 3300
Disclaimer: Not mine, never happened.
Summary: Christian introduces Aldis and J.
Notes: So there was this post and its comments, and then I couldn't resist taking my own idea. This is AUish because this is not how Aldis and J actually met. (I also threw up my hands about how to style J's name, and decided to stick with the initial but that the period made for annoying reading.)


( Under the Influence )

I always feel guilty when I post long, serious things, like I should immediately follow it up with something more fun. So this is more fun! Two miscellaneous Chris/Steve AU bunnies:

The Chef AU

For some reason, the chef AU became very popular in a very short amount of time. I think I read four different J2 chef AUs in the period of a week or so. And because my mind is (almost) all Chris/Steve all the time, I thought they should have a chef AU too.

Steve is the head chef at 67, owned by Eric Kripke. Let's make Danneel his sous chef (if Chris has a female sous chef, we'll give Steve one too), Jared the pastry chef, and Jensen the cute waiter. Maybe the three of them can have a threesome thing going on. Jeff would have to be there too. Let's make him the sommelier. Maybe Mike's the crazy busboy and Tom's the other cute waiter.

Chris is the head chef at Hyperion, owned by Joss Whedon. Stephanie Romanov is his sous chef. Dave has to be there somewhere, so let's make him the sommelier. Alexis Denisof is the pastry chef, and he and waitress Alyson Hannigan have an adorable love affair going on. Mercedes McNabb is the hostess. James Marsters and Charisma Carpenter are bitchy waitstaff. Vincent Kartheiser is the broodingly teenage busboy. (Hmm. Except for the part where he's not actually a teenager. Maybe the fact that everyone thinks he is is part of what he's broody about.)

67 and Hyperion are competitors, of course, in the high-end restaurant business. Chris and Steve somehow meet outside of that and fall in love and there's possibly drama about them working at competing restaurants. I don't know. I mostly just wanted to cast it.

The Werewolf AU

Steve's Alpha of his own pack now, a group of musicians, artists, actors: people doing the work their souls tell them they should be doing.

Chris is Steve's mate, which makes him pack second, although he'd probably be that even without it. Steve took Chris from another pack, or, more accurately, Chris came from another pack because Steve didn't fight for him head on. First of all, he wasn't entirely sure he could win that fight with Chris's Alpha, and secondly, he was pretty sure Chris was the type of guy who wouldn't mind being reminded of who he belonged to but wouldn't appreciate being taken in the first place. So Steve went the long way around and applied his music, his cooking, and the firm certainty of his love until Chris left his pack and joined Steve's of his own volition.

Aldis came from Chris's old pack too. He's barely a pup, and he adores Chris. Steve's had to growl to most new wolves and too many older wolves new to the pack that they're to obey Chris as they would him; Chris had to take Aldis aside and tell him to obey Steve as he would Chris. Even though Aldis is new to the pack and hasn't quite learned to read the lines of power, he knows that Chris is Steve's.

Powerful wolves can tolerate silver, and silver jewelry is one of the things wolves look for when they're sizing each other up. Chris has a box full of the stuff. Steve buys him a piece to add to his collection, a wide cuff to cage his wrist. He has the inside engraved with four words in delicate script: wolves mate for life. It makes him feel better. Chris wears it to bed, nuzzles at Steve's neck and lets the metal rest against his skin. Steve doesn't need Chris's whispered "for life" to know what he means.

The thing about having Aldis around, though, is that he makes Jared look mature. Jared's older than he acts, although he hasn't said how much. Steve has some guesses he doesn't share. For a long time, Jared was a floater of sorts. He wasn't a lone wolf, exactly - he had pack ties, it's just that his pack was in Texas while he was in LA - but he hung out with any number of different packs. That was before he met Jensen. Jensen's been with Steve's pack almost since it formed. His previous pack wasn't bad, exactly, just not quite what Jensen needed. Jensen has a habit of getting himself into occasional trouble, nothing too big, just enough to be worrying. It was on one of those occasions that Jared met him, stood at his back and between them they finished the fight Jensen might or might not have started. Jared's been at Jensen's back since then.

This is where the villain should be introduced. The villain is a member of Chris and Aldis's old pack who is displeased that their Alpha (David Boreanaz, of course) didn't go get them back. I don't know who that should be, though. I only know that it can't be J. August Richards. The other subplot is about J (J.? Jay? He apparently refers to himself as J. and IMDb lists "Jay" as his nickname, but figuring out how to style this in prose without annoying or confusing readers is, well, annoying and confusing.) wanting Aldis to come back to their pack because he genuinely likes/is fond of/maybe loves Aldis and wants him there.

I was browsing wolfpup2000's LA Con photos (How awesome is it that she did a whole post of people's shoes?), and I was looking at the pictures of Steve (panel, concert) and considering his newly short hair, and I thought, "I don't think this is a good look for him. He kind of looks like someone. Hmm. It kind of makes him look like Timothy Hutton." At that point, I cracked up and realized it was time to go to yoga and had to put off writing this post.

Here's why that cracked me up: when fangirls talk about connections, we talk about the Aldis-Chris having previous coworkers/friends in common thing. But if you pay attention to what Chris and other people are saying, Tim is the one Chris has really become friends with. I keep thinking there needs to be some Chris/Tim. So the idea that now Steve looks vaguely more like Tim (not a lot, just something about how the hair falls over his forehead, plus the round face) brings me to my wacky bunny: Steve's totally jealous and making himself look more like what he thinks Chris wants now.

(And now I'll go back to my Chris/Steve space AU and my Aldis/Chris/J. August Richards fic.)

Status updates I would have posted to a fannish Facebook over the past couple of days:

• Ruth is looking at naked pictures of David Boreanaz's wife.


• Ruth would like Chris and Steve to stop standing around and get in bed.


• Ruth worries that her space AU needs a plot.


• Ruth finds Dave and Jaime adorable, plus Dave's wearing Chris's shirt: http://www.jamd.com/image/g/3152108


• Ruth's bracket says Dean, but her heart says Barney.

lakeeffectgirl suggested Twitter as a platform for this, but I think I need a specifically fannish thing. I did post my thoughts about 2009 Fandom Steel Cage Match March Madness (and you can watch the community for future years: f_march_madness) as Facebook status updates, but the other things, well, maybe not so appropriate for a venue where my audience includes such folks as my mother, my teenage cousins, and a handful of ex-coworkers.

I'm also skeptical about Twitter, which probably means I'll end up using it in the near future. Here's what bothers me most about it: I already have LJ and Facebook that I load and reload eighty bajillion times a day; do I really need one more such thing? I also don't have a cell phone, so updating via texting is not a feature that I would have much use for. To let you know how lame and old-school I really am: for the one person I am following on Twitter (Steve Carlson, because this has the potential to be both hilarious and awful, although so far it's mostly boring), I created an LJ feed for it (scarlsontwitter) so I can just read it on my friends page. (I would do this with the two other people I'd like to follow, but their Twitter feeds [updates? What's the proper terminology here?] are protected, so I can't.)

( A little in the way of blahblahblah. )

This is not part of my attempt at an unhappy story, so you can read it without fear. There is a lot of sex, which may be an enticement or a warning, depending on your perspective.

***

( Not Ever )

This is another part of my attempt to write an unhappy story. Consider yourself forewarned again.

***

( Brokenhearted )

This is part of an attempt to write an unhappy story. Consider yourself forewarned.

***

( No Happily Ever Afters )

Today is Chris's turn to be featured here on 22 Days of Music. I'm sure he's very proud. (I have to tell you that I set up a comprehensive Google alert for him, and since I have my LJ set to let Google index it, when I post about him, it shows up in my Google alerts the next day, and makes me laugh.)

I thought about picking one of his new songs as Christian Kane, but I've already told you about how much I like "Let Me Go." Plus, when I'm listening to him, I'm usually listening to Kane songs off of their two CDs. (For those of you who don't know: Kane was Chris and Steve and sometimes some other people, while Chris's solo career now has varying other band members backing him up.) According to iTunes' Top 25 Most Played feature, there are two Kane songs off of Kane: Acoustic Live In London! (I swear the exclamation point is there on the CD even though it doesn't show up that way on the merch page) tied for my third most listened to song. (While twenty of the twenty-five are Kane songs, neither of the top two are.) "Track 29" seems more appropriate for the day before Valentine's Day because their intro commentary for it tells us that it's about a girl and because part of what I love about it is that Chris is laughing at the beginning. But it's also Friday the 13th, which seems like a day for turning things on their heads, which is why today's song is "Mary Can You Come Outside." Where else are you going to find a badass country singer doing a song about the dilemmas involved in overhearing a domestic violence situation? In the intro track just before this begins, Chris says, "I went over and politely knocked on the door and then politely beat the shit out of him."


Mary Can You Come Outside - Kane

You had to know that Chris and Steve were up next. I just want you to admire my restraint - I could have cheated it and done four days of them with the letter but not spirit of the law argument that Steve Carlson, The Steve Carlson Band, Christian Kane, and Kane are four separate artists, but I resisted.

Today's song is Steve's "Ballad of Denim Boy and Grey Girl," which I very much like and which has the advantage of being a love story and therefore appropriate for the approach to Valentine's Day.


Ballad of Denim Boy and Grey Girl - Steve Carlson

This was amusing to me, so I took a screenshot for you. (This is what I feel like doing on a Saturday night.)

( Oh, My Fangirl Self )

dedalvs responded to my post about Proust Was a Neuroscientist with a list of ways to find new music. They're good ideas, but, as I told him, I don't care enough about music to put in the effort. (I think if I were interested enough, I could write a music version of my post about how visual art doesn't do it for me.) But his idea about asking friends is something I do have the effort for. (I've also downloaded a few fic soundtracks over the last few days. So far, I've only listened to the one that's the soundtrack to a Chris/Steve cowboy AU. It's pretty good, although there's one song that doesn't fit with the atmosphere of the others.)

Recs Request
What music would you suggest? Is there anything that you're loving right now that I would like? I have a $3 mp3/movie/TV show credit from Amazon that I'd love to use before it expires at the end of the month, so anything that you think I should buy from them (from a non-RIAA label) would be an extra bonus.

Project: 22 Days of Music
In return for any recs you may or may not make, I'll make some recs myself. Every day between now and Valentine's Day, I'll post about one song I like. Rules to keep me on track:

• I will make sure you can listen to the song somehow (this may take the form of YouTube videos fairly frequently because almost everything is on YouTube and I'm probably too lazy to upload every song for you).
• For those of you who fear 22 songs by Christian Kane and Steve Carlson (yes, fuseji, I am looking at you), I promise not to repeat artists.
• Valentine's Day will be a love song. (I didn't have to tell you this, but two seemed like not enough rules.)

(I am going to attempt to embed video here. I've never done this. I have no idea if it'll work or not. If not, check back later, because I'll keep trying to fix it. Also, if things start playing automatically and you find it annoying, you should install flashblock.)

Anyway, a few days ago, keepaofthecheez posted a hilarious video that needs to be shared, but I didn't know who I should share it with, which is why you all get to be shared with.

How To Give A Great Man To Man Hug


General Etiquette:How To Give A Great Man To Man Hug

Then, I saw a link to a Leverage behind the scenes sort of thing which asks cast members "Who is most like their character?" If you've been paying attention to me recently, you probably know where this is going. Whether you do or not, it's still entertaining enough to watch.

Leverage - Behind The Scenes: Most Like Character



(Also entertaining is the one where Aldis says he and Chris just wanted chairs with their names on them and they finally got them. This may explain why Chris looks so uncomfortable in the picture where Beth's in his chair. He just wants his own chair! Be forewarned that some of their behind the scenes vids are spoilery for eps that haven't yet aired.)

Even as I was entertained by these two videos and thought about posting them here, I thought, "But how do I connect them together?" And then I was watching/listening to videos of Kane live, and I came across a video of Christian Kane doing "Let Me Go" (which I love) live. The person taping was far enough away from the stage that there are people wandering in and out of the frame between the camera and Chris. Two of those people are a couple of men who have a man to man hug that is both quite long and also repeated. I'm not sure what the etiquette teacher voice from the first video would say about that.

Let Me Go (Live)



Now I'm watching Four Sheets to the Wind. Oh, Chris, why do you end up in these not that good, place-specific indie movies where you have sex scenes that last less than ten seconds? And more importantly, why haven't I learned that watching movies just because you're in them is not really a good idea?

I also just read through a transcript of an older Q&A (linked from dea_liberty's Steve/Chris Tin-Hat PARTY post) wherein Chris says, in response to a question about other skills and talents, "I normally cook on this whole thing, but Steve's an unbelieveable cook, so I can't take that from him, cuz when I learned, I learned from him. So I love to cook, I cook everyday, that's my favorite thing to do. But he [Steve] went to culinary school so...fuck him! You won. He's a really really good cook, so that's your thing Steve..." *swoon*

(I kind of want to ask if anyone's tried to make a Chris and Steve timeline for easy reference, but apparently there's been wank in the past over the whole Kane the band becoming Christian Kane the solo artist thing, and I don't know either of the communities I started watching well enough to know if asking is a good idea or not.)

( Why I feel guilty about this. )

More notes about the origins of this at the end.

***

( It's Different This Time )

***

( Origins and Whatnot )