i have spent a lot of time watching this season's so you think you can dance and thinking about which of these beautiful boys would be best off on -- uh, adam lambert's arm? his, uh, other parts? i've heard enough and seen enough to feel pretty sure that in addition to small, sarcastic, very pretty-faced and perky-assed white boys, adam definitely has a thing for very hot flamboyant dancers, especially if they are black or latino. (all in all it's a fairly broad definition of "type," particularly among most gay men.)

obviously the best choices are kapuono and brandon, though i think there's a good case to be made for adé. i suppose it's helpful that they have the same management/publicity/powers that be.

so who's going to write this?

i had a dream last night that brendon rearranged "camisado" into this sad piano piece. they played it only once, on a night the show was being filmed. it was as close to a public statement they were gong to make, just spencer sitting with his palms on his thighs, silent at the drum set, and brendon in a single spotlight, slow and sad and mournful: this was no accident, this was a therapeutic chain of events.

and that, i guess, is what i think about ryan right now.

when i first saw those photos i assumed they were staged -- the composition, the light, the girls and the hazy california backdrop: look, they said, it's a 70s rock star tableau, how hipster of us. i would have preferred douchey, ironic, pretentious disclaimers, a little obvious mocking of fans who can't handle the idea their musician-heroes use relatively common party drugs. that's what a casual cocaine user with a sense of humor would have done. all ryan did was deny like a dopefiend.

[if i were writing a story i'd save this scene, but i'm not. i'm also not looking for a fight.]

i love(d) panic(!) at the disco like a crazy emo kid.

or -- that's not quite right. i loved them -- in their presently-past tense, for-now-at-least no-longer-complete state -- like a 15-year-old theater fag, like a freshman stoned hippie, like a desert neon refugee always searching for greater meaning in a land of mediocrity. and i still do.

they're still barely not babies, a band of boys who got very famous very fast, and who managed to defy most models for that fame that others (including us) tried to squeeze them into. they're tiny little musical geniuses who were the soundtrack to an amazing couple of years in which i met wonderful people and saw amazing shows.

and it will be fine, however it is it works out. they will go on and grow up. we will wear out old records or be delighted or surprised or disinterested in new songs. we will hear some old chorus of theirs somewhere we're not expecting it and remember this time so vividly it will feel as if we can reach out and touch brendon's ridiculous face and ryan's strange evolution and jon's amiable bare feet and spencer's steady anchor behind them all. we will have new fandoms and new bands with old friends who still smile for the same reasons at the same tiny reminders. this is how it always goes.

but i do have to say this: leave it to panic at the disco to break up in the gayest way possible. i would expect nothing less.

"I feel like John Lennon got shot, like Obama lost, like my dog got ran over," Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump said. "This is sad like 'On the Waterfront,' sad like 'Raging Bull,' sad like 'The Wrestler.' Music rarely gets hits like this; this is almost unparalleled. Even people who didn't enjoy his music have to acknowledge his influences. He was to pop what Davis and Coltrane were to bop. He was to R&B what Neil Armstrong was to the moon: an explorer who discovered a whole world unto itself. He was the Nikola Tesla of dance moves."

+

i'm pretty sure that patrick stump has out-classed and out-written us all.

ETA would help to c&p the right quote.

ok, yes. the new clips where kris and adam interview each other are adorable and, yes, the sexual tension between them is sort of almost insanely off the charts and they should just fuck already or whatever. YES. i agree.

but: i sort of think of this thing in terms of there being a reigning champion that any new piece of media has to beat in order to be declared GAYEST MOMENT EVER.

and for my money:



still wins. in front of millions of people on what everyone had spent months telling them was the most important moment of their lives, and i honestly thought they might accidentally start making out because they were just so intensely paying attention to each other over everything else.

also, let the record show: today i deleted one of my 7 million panic icons in order to make room for this one.

i often write personal (locked) posts that are about surviving trauma. and because LJ has so long been a place where i can have really substantive and important conversations about trauma, i always (or certainly try to) consider which of my friends here about whom i may know many long, awful life stories might not want to read them, put things behind cut tags accordingly, and try to be descriptive when doing so. (yo, comrades-in-arms: please feel free to tell me if i ever don't do this well enough and i will quite happily edit or warn however you'd like.)

anyway -- i am all thinky today about the discussion around warnings and triggers and how fic (not personal story-journal-type entries) is labeled. since that's what you're all talking about, and it drives me crazy how sometimes once something has been labeled "wank" it's like you can't talk about it seriously any more or you've somehow fallen into an unwinnable flamewar. also i'm still thinking about how yesterday the chris brown sentence made me so disgusted and i felt so helpless watching it and at least this is something going on in my own backyard.

what i'm going for here is pretty simple: working through my own strategies for enjoying complex media in a fucked-up world, and attempting some responsible citizenship in the form of a light literature review of my own work.

( how i avoid reading things i don't want to: not a you-must-do-this-or-don't-complain, just possible strategies for survival )

( how i've seen warnings change/evolve since i was first writing fic in '96 )

( how i decide what labels/warnings to use )

( a quick trip through my fic and thoughts on whether any should have been better labeled; contains mention of one i found particularly problematic )

i get a lot of comments, especially on certain stories, that either demand/beg/plead for a sequel in order to change an ending they didn't love or berate me in some way for having written something that "hurts" so much because whoever the OTP in question is doesn't end up happily ever after. i do my best to just say "thanks" and move along, though i find that kind of feedback pretty lame. i would never tell people that my stories are simple and happy and uncomplicated, because i don't want them to be. i also don't have a lot of interest in people/protagonists who make consistently bad choices and learn nothing from them. (note: i am -- i hope obviously -- not talking about people who don't get a choice in the matter, whatever the situation in question is.)

all that said, if i've written anything in the past -- especially about sex -- that you think could have been a little better set up in its header, by all means please let me know here or in comments to the fic in question. and this is certainly an open invitation for the future that if it helped in some way, you can comment on a fic before reading it and ask me for more details/spoilers/warnings.

related: i'm not sure actually whether i would label something as having S/M content unless the exploration of that desire was the point of the story. it's been a while since i've had enough canon at my disposal to make it worth my consideration (thank you, adam lambert!). thoughts?

this is rambly and a little unrefined even after several read-throughs. if there's a way that actually works to say don't link in big metafandom type forums, that's my preference. usually i lock something like this but it seems better off being out there for everyone who's interested.

it seems clear that brendon and spencer are just hanging out, surfing, getting stoned, watching comedy central and occasionally double dating with pete & ashlee.

oh, and recording a beautiful lullaby for bx: http://www.sendspace.com/file/0m45oj

speaking of spencer and brendon, go read this big bang fic. it's the one where they go on a cruise. it's awesome. i love reading amazing stories i had absolutely no hand in or early eye on, just this little present of storytelling.

(this is the nice version of what i actually said on first listen, which was something like, fuck you, panic at the disco, get your shit together and go back to what you're best at.)

i've been out since forever and ever ago, and in all those years as a chick who identifies as queer, here is a conversation i have had about a million times:

Me: Wow, that guy is hot.
Person: Wait, I thought you were a lesbian.
Me: Well, no, not really.
Person: So. You're bisexual?
Me: Uh, sure. Okay. Guys are hot. Girls are hot. People are hot. Whatever you want to call that is cool by me.
Person: is totally confused
Me: laughs at how easy this is

uh, no, it's maybe not the nicest response, but nothing fills me with mischievous joy like someone so determined to see everything as either/or. there are totally people out there who are gold star fags or dykes or straight people, kinsey sixes or zeroes, or so i hear tell. i don't really get that, but i don't think there's anything wrong with it as long as you've considered your options thoroughly and hopefully even experimented a little along the way. if you're talking out of your ass about it and trying to force your lame little binary ideas on me, i totally reserve the right to confuse you as much as possible.

i think it's awesome that adam lambert isn't invested in making things easier on everyone who wants his sexuality to be black or white. whose actually is? and the biggest superstars of our times are those who knew our real obsession with sex isn't about having it one way or the other. it's about having it all ways. (do i also think 20/20 remains a lame program that trivializes everything of substance and edits with an eye towards an easy headline? totally.)

oh wait, i think i've already said this all before. thank fuck sexuality is too complicated for us to all figure it out in a soundbite.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.

But exactly what is his type? When Idol producers put him in a room to share with Allen, Lambert says his first thought was, "They put me with the cute guy. Distracting! He's the one guy I found attractive in the whole group on the show: nice, nonchalant, pretty and totally my type — except that he has a wife. I mean he's open-minded and liberal, but he's definitely 100% straight."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.

well we knew he wasn't blind.

from here. also here.

good morning, world.

That guy
American Idol: Kris/Adam, Kris/Katy. ~4,500 words. R-ish.
"What's your favorite thing to do on tour?" a reporter calls out. "People watch," Kris answers, and the corner of Adam's mouth rises in a smile.

Disclaimer: Please share this with your wife.

( You can't tell me who I think is hot. )

back to the classics, briefly:

this short clip of brendon talking about "the new album" while spencer stands and stares at him is pretty fucking funny. if only because as far as we can tell, they have done absolutely NO WORK WHATSOEVER on such an album, and it really seems as if brendon is completely bullshitting and spencer is just like, say whateverthefuck you want, has anyone even talked to ryan this month?

( video here )

in the list of things that run randomly through my head no matter whether i ever actually say them or write them down is the way that at our BND show (and probably plenty of other cities) pete wentz intro'd a block of songs by saying, "fuck you johnny depp, she's my winona!" before spinning off into a circle. idk, it was perfectly phrased and timed and delivered and sweet and cocky all at once, and i still think about it all the time.

gabe saporta has a tumblr, y'all. someone (not me, actually) made a helpful feed. gsaportatumblr will either make everyone hate him or like, accidentally change someone's life.

two belated thanks:

+ phaballa recorded an awesome version of my old jc/lance AU, a slow beating between them. (which totally guilted me into reposting in LJ that story as promised a while back: see here.)

+ disarm_d wrote this awesome story with exactly the kind of genderfuckery i most adore: Got That Certain Something.

and one totally obvious point to make: ever since kris allen went on jay leno and talked about how in high school he played both baseball and viola i've been waiting for someone to discuss how he walked right out of a high school musical alternate universe. y/y?

this is only related to the kris story in that it's about being confused when you least anticipate it. thanks to disarm_d and jae_w for saying MORE.

+

Never find nobody
Adam/Kris, Adam/Brad
They know better.

Explicit, though probably not in the way that's expected. ~3,000 words.

( somewhere far along this road )

i don't know. this isn't what i expected to be doing tonight either.

+

Way down inside
American Idol, Kris/Adam
~3500 words

For reference, this is how Kris and Adam hug. Gay bar via the Abbey, which proclaims itself the #1 spot to take your straight friends.

( baby baby )

i told disarm_d i'd write a tiny missing scene in adampov from her story.

this is the moment she picked: when Brendon FALLS ASLEEP ON HIM.

( There's no way he'll be able to make this funny at brunch. )

YAY!!

i managed to harass and cajole and beg disarm_d enough to write a real, seriously awesome and hot sequel to her little brendon/adam story. go read it. no really. stay up and read it.

for the record, if i were the kind of person sitting on a million dollar venture capital fund, i would invest in dreamwidth. not because i particularly need it in my life right now, or know what to do with it (i guess beyond back up some fic) because LJ is a pretty closed loop for me these days -- i don't particularly want or need new friends (no offense) and i don't do anything with it any different than i have for most of the last 8 years i've had one.

but if i had money laying around, i would invest in denise, because she is hands down one of the smartest and most ethical, thoughtful and hard-working people i have ever known. she is one of a very short list of people on my friends list i've never met in person, yet she could be inventing a new kind of smart cat litter and i would invest in it on principle, assuming in some way it would be better and more efficient and more useful to someone. i don't even have a cat!

i will never understand fandom's need to declare enemies of the state every time something shiny and new comes around, be it tech or tv shows that will somehow "steal" our current crowd. i thought it was totally ridiculous when people declared twitter the end of our worlds. now everyone freaks the fuck out every single time some actor or boy in a band posts 130 characters about what he ate (as well we should!).

it's simple: if you don't want one, don't get one. if you're so invested in what "fandom" means that you feel the need to write manifestoes about it, maybe at some point you too will find enough like-minded people to go do something yourself you think is better. or maybe you'll just complain about it. by all means, ask hard questions, question how this is better or benefits you before giving it money. i am pretty sure denise would be the first to agree with that, given how much they are emphasizing "trust over time" before paid accounts. but if all you want to see of this project is something that somehow oppresses you by its very being, seriously, just move on with your life.

so. this is my totally unsolicited in-kind venture capital investment. i don't know what i'll use dreamwidth for any more than i do anything else denise makes out of thin air. but i think she likely knows more about LJ than most of us put together, and i think it's awesome she did something about it.

a year ago this time we were wrapping up the first leg of the happy birthday brendon tour after seeing back to back shows in SF. (two of the 10 panic shows i saw in 2008, which i am almost certain is a personal record.)

the only thing missing, really, from the fob/cobra show we just saw were panic themselves -- even pete commented on how weird it was to be playing vegas without them, though they were obviously too busy "smoking weed and growing beards."

what i still love about this band so much is i have no idea what they're going to do next, but i know they're going to do the fuck out of it, and that they'll enjoy doing it for us, and that will be enough for me to fall in love with them all over again.

[psa]

traveling a lot, working a lot, barely keeping up with anything, and so i've done some small cuts to the friends list to try to get things to a place where i can actually read it once a day and not have it take 2 hours.

whatever fic i manage to eke out will remain public, it's not you it's me, etc. and you can still find me in all the old familiar places (wearemany at livejournal dot com, etc.) if you feel i've been cruel or rash or anything else.

be well, all.