Between the good and bad, that's where you'll find me, Reaching for Heaven

::Sigh:: Got through about half of the dumb paperwork for the SSI madness before I started getting too stressed out by it. I know, how can paperwork be stressful? Well, when it's paperwork that my financial security depends on and it has to do with Extremely Personal Information to the point of TMI at times, it can make you feel like a bug under a microscope. I'm just worried that no matter how much information I give them, it won't be enough, and frankly, there is a large part of me that wants to simply sit down and write a long, angry, rant-heavy letter telling the SSI bureaucrats what I really think of how they're running this, and how much so-called "normal" people drive me crazy. Yeah, you heard this all before on that entry which I practically erased because it got too angsty...

On to more pleasant things, like the strange dreams I had last night. I can't quite make out why I had the first one, but I fully understand where the second one came from.

( Dream #1: Riding the bus with strange characters )

( Dream #2: MxO dream )

I just finished reading "The Darkness Did Not" (Which I think should be titled "The Darkness Did Not Comprehend", since the current title just kinda leaves you hanging. As in "the darkness did not... do what?!"). I liked it, but parts of it had me wanting to punt the book across the room, namely, some of the unnecessary preaching about how suicides do not deserve to have Requiem Masses said for them or be buried in consecrated ground; and also some really maddening preaching about baptism of desire. I could be dead wrong, but I believe that if a person really, really wants to be with God and asks Him to let them into heaven at the moment of death -- whether they're baptised or not -- then He will take them in. We're all His children, and what truly loving father turns his child away from his home, for whatever reason? I don't think that *everyone* goes to heaven, since everyone has the ability to choose not to, if they cling to their sins and selfishness and refuse to let go. But I don't believe that the gate to heaven is quite so narrow as some people make it out to be.

That said... I loved the final confrontation between the priest aided by his cohorts, the Knights Tumblar (a group of chivalric Catholic laymen; why can't I find guys like them?!), and the vampire: spooky and funny at the same time; it could have been a little tighter if the writing had been less urplish, but it still worked. My other carp is that the book was a bit short on strong female characters (some of the few female characters seemed a little stereotyped, but that's just me), but I'm not going to go crazy about that, lest I sound like one of those fanbrats who write Tenth Member of the Fellowship of the Ring-fics or who give the Winchester Brothers a sister.

Which brings me to the wacky thought that's been pricking at my brain: I started out by playing the "Hm, if I was gonna make a movie of this, who would play what character?" game, but since I couldn't come up with anything beyond fantasy-casting a young Lambert Wilson as Pierre Bontemps (one of the Knights Tumblar and a guy I would love to marry, if I ever found him or someone like him), I started throwing other ideas around... Which lead me to the looney thought: "What would happen if Father Jean Baptist crossed paths with a certain snarky, chain-smoking demon hunter?" It's not impossible: they both deal with things that go bump in the night, they both live in Los Angeles, they're both Catholic, though one's a Traditionalist Catholic cop-turned-priest, and the other is a Walker Percy-esque "bad Catholic" who has a better idea of what's going on than a lot of so-called "good Catholics". I ran it past Constantine, who at first was adverse to the idea, but then he admitted he's had some run-ins with anNOYing Traditionalist Catholics of the sort I call "Traddies", or which he calls just plain "Trads". I've been tossing around a few ideas and sketches, but I don't have anything definate yet, and probably won't, but it's a neat little thought exercise.

Speaking of fanfics, I think Flood is getting his revenge against me for a certain AU fic I started quiddling with: Last night I had this wierd dream about being pregnant and not knowing who the father is (very unlikely to happen) and not even knowing how I ended up that way in the first place. Yes, his snarkiness is going about in my headspace with an utterly evil smirk on his handsome face.

Title: Making it Worse
Day/Theme: September 7: Herr doktor
Series: "Constantine"
Character/Pairing: Arguably OCs
Rating: PG-13 (disturbing elements, language)

Note: Set pre-movie. This fic features Constantine's parents, for whom I've sort-of borrowed the names of the "Hellblazer"-verse version's parents, though I've changed certain details (Thomas is a little more respectable, while Mary-Anne, or Anne-Mary here, is still alive. I regard the Constantine of the movie as an AU version or the American cousin of the comic-book version of the character, which affords me a certain amount of wiggle room in writing up the back story. Apologies to Jamie Delano.). And any odd spellings in dialogue are a result of the speaker's accent.

( Making it Worse )

I'm taking a break from this tomorrow, since I can't come up with anything that fits "Gilgamesh". I had a hard enough time with this one today... I won't say I'm drying up for ideas -- I *do* have two or three ideas for "Hatred is Holy" (Monday the 29th's theme), after all -- but work and my sinus troubles have been getting to me lately.

Title: Out from the Shadows
Day/Theme: August 27: Wait for me whenever darkness falls
Series: "Constantine"
Character/Pairing: John/Angela (Just friends, and a few thoughts of what could have been...)
Rating: PG

Note: Takes place at the very end of the movie

( Wait for me whenever darkness falls )

I walked into the Salvation Army Thrift Shop in Wilmington and practically put my hand on The Jacket. Yes, *the* jacket I need for my Constantine costume. I tried it on right then and there, and dang if it didn't catch the demon hunter's attention (after he'd been quiet since he and I shouted each other out last night when I was going through my "self-pitying shit mode" -- his words, not mine). Now all I need is the tie and the black-strapped wristwatch and to rig up the stencil for the arm tattoos. And oh yes, the cigarette lighter: I may just get a plain Zippo-type lighter and stick a St. Benedict medal to the side of it. I'm tempted to see if I can't find the right sort of make-up for the scars, but that might be pushing it, in terms of authenticity... Either way, Boskone is gonna be fun: it's a simple matter of donning the costume and letting one of my houseguests ride shotgun in my headspace for the rest of the day. Be just my dumb luck to bump into someone costuming as the Hellblazer: that might make for an interesting (read: painful) encounter. ::Glares at the dumb comic-book purists::

I *tried* to find the tie, but luck was against me: I may have to buy that brand new, which will set me back $25 US at Sears. I spent the better part of ten minutes digging through through a bin full of ties; the only black one I managed to scare up had the sun, moon and stars embroidered on it in gold thread. To quote one of my houseguests, "What the hell is this? Harry Potter?"

Finished cranking these out a moment ago. I was going to do one based on the current story arc in "Hellblazer", but I couldn't get the idea to come out on paper. Ah well...

Watch out for the second one: it's kinda graphic and it might offend some people, though it's really more about the relationship and the two personages than the carnal friction (that's the word for it...).

Title: Doppelganger
Day/Theme: August 17: I am inside someone who hates me
Series: "Constantine"
Character/Pairing: Balthazar-Constantine (Rivalry - get yer heads out of the gutter! Yeesh...)
Rating: PG-13 (reference to a suicide attempt)

Possible spoilers within...

( Doppelganger  )



Title: Submission
Day/Theme: August 17: I am inside someone who hates me
Series: "The Matrix"
Character/Pairing: Merovingian/Flood (from the MxO)
Rating: NC-17 (male-male sexual contact, arguably somewhat non-con)

( Submission )

Finally got this damn thing typed up... Hopefully I'll have the last chapter up by the end of the weekend; that's gonna have some "DVD Extras" in it, as it were.

+J.M.J.+

The Smoke of Satan in Your House

by "Matrix Refugee"

Rating: R (Violence, including violence against a cleric, general freakishness)

Warnings: None other than what's been mentioned above

EDITED TO ADD (Thanks for pointing that out, cerulianphoenix)!:

Chapters: Prologue: The Scent of Evil,
Chapter One: Contractors and Commissions
Chapter Two: Under the Floorboards,
Chapter Three: Creeping Around the Basement
Chapter Four: Nipping out for Supplies
Chapter Five: Eviction Notice

( Chapter Six: Cleaning House )

I'm almost finished with Chapter Five of "The Smoke of Satan..." which should be hitting this LJ some time tomorrow night. It's only a short chapter, but the damn thing came out in fragments, so I've been trying to knock it into some semblence of coherance as I type it, which has slowed down the process.

That and I've borrowed the Demon-Hunter's Holy Shotgun and used it to hunt down some Sues in the fandom. I've already trussed one up over on the Place Where Badfics Are Sporked; the other one will be on display tomorrow night.

( Hijinks among the Houseguests )

Just been watching the "how they did that" documentary clips on the second disk of the extended edition of "Constantine": I was right about the emblem of St. Benedict being present -- Check out any close shots of the demon hunter's lighter...

( What, y' think I'm gonna let any spoilers slip through? )

Of course, this has me wondering if I should include two chimeraic scenes I had planned to write for "The Smoke of Satan...", but which I never wrote out, for whatever reason. One featured some of the hoity-toityer members of Sankt Maria's Parish almost ganging up on Constantine when they find out he's prowling around their nice clean little church, and he of course tells it like it is: their nice little church is sitting on top of a hellmouth. It's very Francois Mauriac or Flannery O'Connor-esque sort of scene, where the respectable folk wind up acting -- half unwittingly -- as demonic as some real demons (I sometimes wonder what Mauriac or O'Connor would think of either incarnation of John Constantine). The other featured Natalie sort of venting to Constantine about how upset and annoyed and scared she is with all the stuff that's happening to her parish; he listens to her in "Yeah, yeah, I hear yah, I hear yah [Internal: Stop whining...]" sort of way. I'd like to restore these scenes, but I think I'll probably just release them as "Deleted Scenes", attached to the end of the fic, in a seperate chapter of their own.

*pant, pant, pant, pant...*

I already took one bath today, and I feel like I need another already.

I had some unexpected banking business to take care of -- transferring money to the checking/debit account, otherwise I might have lost my 'Net access for want of a payment; I haven't been able to put anything into that account recently -- so I nicked out this morning to take care of that. Plus, I managed to get my "Constantine" DVD; I haven't watched it yet: I had to work this afternoon, and I've gotten pretty wrapped up reading HP 6:

( Chapter of HP 6 I'm on: Just started Chapter Twenty. Some spoilers... )

Extremely quiet at work: You'd think that everyone would be coming in to do their shopping and enjoy the nice refrigerationair-conditioning. Nope, hardly anyone in the store. I mostly put away overstock and straightened out aisles.

( You know the Houseparty is feeling the heat when... )