Yes ma'am.

And you don't have to take them up on it. If you think their site looks like shit, and all the rest of the fic there is so bad you cringe to even think about being next to it? You can say no to that, too.

Knowledge, she is my friend. Who says you can't teach an old cat new tricks?

Speaking of which, I was just settling in to add some bits to "Needfire", courtesy of both Deena's and Bev's readthroughs. The weather just broke (storm central, rain and howling winds) and I am about to be a good cat mama and go down feed the sick outdoor kitty in the basement (Bill the Cat, that is) by hand. Tomorrow we shove little tiny pills down his throat and probably get shredded in the process.

But between cat, and my husband's car accident earlier this week, and catering this con party tomorrow, I've barely got any writing done the past few days and it's driving me bonkers.

Theo, this is a longish post because I have so damn much invested in Magneto. It's a thing. Anyway, I adore the elegance, the formality, of the writing. It seems sparse, but it's descriptive. It strikes me as being structured much like Magneto - or any elderly gentleman - might think. And the Magneto you give us is extraordinary. Which, really, he would have to be.

But they underestimate how much metal is present in tiny things, like the staples in a magazine, or the eyelets on a visitor's shoe.

Shouldn't he be able to use the iron (and copper and magnesium, etc) in a person's body against them? I've always thought that he should be able to suck the heme from a person and have them suffocate. But this is a comic argument, and nothing against the story.

A man's reach should exceed his grasp, Magneto tells himself.

How much do I love this? A lot. Really. It sounds just like him, doesn't it?

Besides, there is a certain style involved in strolling out of his prison that he can't entirely resist.

This - the sheer fucking arrogance and whimsy of the man - is perfect.

more subtle ravages of fighting for his survival on every level, including stealing food from the hands of those too weak to fight back.

And this is what one must never forget when dealing with Magneto - he has witnessed what humanity can do to those that are outsiders. Witnessed? No. He has been dealt it, and been forced to deal with it. May I say that the above is one of the more intense descriptions of life in a concentration camp I have read?

As has happened every dreaming night of his life, Erik relives the guards dragging him away from his parents, sees their faces, hears their voices pleading and his own screaming, feels the rain beating down on his face and the mud sliding beneath his cheap boots, the flex of his nascent power beating ineffectually at the bars and gates.

My own personal nightmare is being separated from my family. The scene in Schindler's List that spoke to me most viscerally about the horrors of the camps was when the children were taken from their parents. It struck me in the gut when I watched X-Men. It struck me again, here.

Magneto hardly ever dreams of the liberation of his final camp. He had been in the final stages of typhoid, and had hardly the strength to lift his head from the pillowless bunk when the American medics arrived and triaged him to a hospital.

Ah, but my memory tells me that canon has Erik and Anna (his soon to be wife) escaping from a camp. I do not know if this has been overturned, but I do know this was given as his history at one point.

[link]

I posted my LotR Aragorn-Eowyn story to Glass Onion. It seemed a good start. But the format got weird on my copy, so I had to go through and edit--and I didn't notice the fucking typo in the very first bloody word! Tey instead of They!!! Arghhh!!! So there it is, my very first story, with a tyro's mistake. Hell of a first impression that'll be.

Oh, curse you all, you talented folk. I've skimmed through the past, what, 500 posts - I wanted to skip, because I know that I just. don't. have. the. time. right now...but so many lovely pieces of writing are to be found here that I couldn't bring myself to do it. As it is I'd far rather be able to savour them properly and feel wretched for readiing so swiftly - but that's an hour gone just playing the catch up game. Grr. MUST get on with my wretched essay now. Grr.

Wonderful the range of genres here - most especially enjoyed Theo's Magneto piece (for obvious reason) and if Ple doesn't continue with her Wes/Andrew I'll track her down and lick her into shape. Eh. (eyes glaze over momentarily)

Um. Yes. Oooh - lovely Fred/Faith, also. Um.

I'm very envious of you all, though. My life at present doesn't seem to involve having time to read, let alone write. I've got all these poor stories sitting on backburners and it's not of the good, really. Colour me jealous.

Funnily enough I just got a request to archive Wild Again, my maiden voyage into fic writing. Funny, that - it feels such a long long time ago.

And that reminds me, do you have more Xander stuff for me to beta? Yes, yes, I read that 'don't have time to read let alone write' stuff - come on, Xander needs to be tortured.

I think FayJay needs minions. Not regular minions, she's got those, but, what, time minions? The ones that can slow time passage down, and let the lady read and write?

I think that would be my superpower of choice, if I was offered one.

Further to this crazy post, may I present another crazy post:

Conversation only this time, post eps Never Leave Me for Buffy and Habeas Corpses for Angel.

~~~

“You again?”

“Me again.”

“What happened to your chest?”

“Minions of darkness. Your neck?”

“Stake.”

“Some guy missed? I’d have thought you were hard to miss, but…”

“Shut up, Spike.”

“What’s brought this mood on, then?”

“How can you be so cheerful?”

“Well, now the Hellmouth’s open, I figure Buffy’ll be along soon, searching the basement and rescuing me and whatnot. She seems very set on looking after me these days.”

“Lucky bastard.”

“I though you were all into the Cordelia chick these days.”

“Yeah. And she’s into Connor.”

“What? Your son?”

“Yeah.”

A pause.

“Into meaning, what, exactly? Into ‘looking after’ or into…”

“Into having sex with.”

“Ah. That’s… weird. I mean, I knew Drusilla got off on all the ‘daddy’ stuff, but I didn’t reckon on it running in the family quite that way.”

“Neither did I.”

“Still, you’ve always got me, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Oh, hurrah, Elena, I'm so glad you liked it!

I found that I was unconsciously trying to write for Sir Ian's voice-as-Magneto, which really was quite something. (The voice, I mean.) I tend to work in first person, so trying for something more third-omniscient and yet true to the character was a fun challenge.

I remember seeing a film about the Holocaust where a camp survivor more or less says (in translation, and modified by the dim memory capacity of my brain): "Nobody who survived the camps was nice." Even if you went in as an ordinary decent human being, the margin of survival was so slim that if you didn't learn to take actions like rat-finking out your bunkmates or stealing food from the dying or volunteering to be a Sonderkommando ("This way to the showers. No, no, this is the ordinary procedure, nothing to worry about."), you would end up dead in the short or the long run.

Anyway, yeah, the comics canon had Erik and Magda breaking out at one point (and there's an interesting plot bunny in what would have happened had they turned left instead of right and ended up in East Germany or whatever), but I'm pretty much shrugging and supposing that the movie universe is separate enough that I'm not going to fuss over it... besides, it was such a good image that I couldn't resist when it sprang into my brain. :-)

And FayJay -- how pleased I am that you liked it, since you were the one that de-hutched the plot bunny! A big MWAH to you.

Am, BWAH!

I do love your back and forths with the Boys in the Basement.