We're gonna run out of cake at this rate

Guys, GUYS, did you SEE the latest Naruto manga?!?!? Fuuuuuck, it's got me PSYCHED!! Oh god, the cover, THE COVER, SERIOUSLY!!

Perve over here: Naruto 515

The fighters! The generals! Akatsuki's force! Naruto being awesome (and about as sharp as usual, which is not very), Sasuke! Kabuchimaru being creepy! PREPARATIONS FOR WAR!! It's got everything!

Also, "the turtle moved"?! Was it just me that let out a Small Gods-related squee of doom? THE TURTLE MOVES, Y'ALL.

Why, you ask, am I getting wired up by Naruto again, after spending months handing my brain over to Inception and Sherlock?

Well, I shall tell you!

Some of you may remember that back in June, before the whole "waiting for a train" malarchy started, prettypriestess and I signed up for the Jounin Wave of the Naruto Big Bang. There have been some delays in deadlines and posting, and then Uni started for Ember, and we sort of stalled around 50K (it was only supposed to be 20K! Why, brain, why?). Now, though, we've been informed (thank you, weeaboobs) that we have LESS THAN TWELVE DAYS TO COME UP WITH SOME EPIC SHIT TO ROUND UP OUR EPIC STORY. The deadline is 14th November, and I have lectures (and a Super Sekrit Event, more on this later) happening on 13th Nov, so that day will be wasted for me, as, I imagine, would be most of 14th Nov.

So that leaves us with about ten days to tie up a hell of a lot of back story, and aforementioned epic shit, and yet do justice to the most fun either of us has had writing in ages. I'm re-reading over the 50K we have so far, just to remember what we did when, and I know Ember's doing the same. We have a good chance of making this work, since both of us work WAY better under pressure. As I told weeaboobs earlier, I hope it will all come together in one great big glorious mess right on time.

I'd actually forgotten just how much PURE FUN writing Naruto is. Inception is a fandom full of thinky thoughts, with characters whose writing brings about certain responsibilities to them and to the fandom (which is ridiculously prolific, and whose quality of writing material is beyond anything I've ever seen anywhere else). There is a sort of set viewpoint to Arthur's and Eames' characters that isn't quite as malleable as we pretend it to be, because we in the fandom are a bit set on certain character traits that can't be fiddled with too much without descending into OoC-ness.

With Naruto, you have the 'verse, and well-shaped characters that have been around for years, and a huge backstory that you can use at will, and it's still more FUN than anything else. Ember and I have been having a ball fiddling with it, and I hope that when we finally post, it will be as enjoyable to our readers as it was to us wot wrote it. Okay, back to slaving away with me!

OH OH also observe my new Tom Hardy mood theme!! It is by Aeolytheis, and it showcases the many, MANY reasons I adore that silly, strange, bizarre, yet appealingly complicated man.

I feel so sad, so emotionally exhausted today, and it's all gyzym's fault, her and pressed against the pending physics of my passed down last name. It's so heartbreakingly beautiful that it made me curl up in a ball of contentment and abject hopelessness and resignation and longing -- not a natural born combination, I know.

It's just -- back when this whole thing started (god, I'm making it sound as if the Arthur/Eames fandom has been going on for years, when it didn't really exist before June), I remember syrraki saying she didn't like it, because all fandom really wants is Arthur and Eames having sex with each other. And okay, there's a lot of that, I'm not going to lie, and there's nothing wrong with that at all, we'd be hypocrites to complain about it. This story, though, this story is so damned powerful that I don't think anyone could say that the Arthur/Eames fandom is just about the sex after they read it.

No other fandom has made me crave having a significant other like this one has. And okay, this is in part a rather self-indulgent, whiny post, but jesus, I read this last night and I could cry, because I trully, really don't believe anyone will ever love me in my life the way Arthur loves Eames in that story; I just can't even articulate the magnitute of that feeling, and believe me, I've been trying for the past half hour. It's not even a particularly happy story, it deals with some very powerful personal issues, but it's still beyond anything I've ever read, and I don't know why it's affecting me this much, but I just can't stop thinking about it. Sometimes it's not the moments when we're happy, but the times when we are unbearably sad and close to breaking that are the most romantic of all.

I've tried cheering myself up by reading happy, fluffy fics, but I think the effect this story had on me is going to be a lot longer-lasting than just over the time it took me to read it. I mean, come on, I'm breaking out The Smiths -- this story is staying. No wonder Arthur/Eames is becoming my primary fandom of late; the overall quality of the writing is beyond anything I've ever encountered. I find myself doubtful that I'm ever going to purchase another romance novel in my life; the stories this fandom ekes out with astounding regularity make published romance literature somewhat obsolete for me.

Title: I Won't Dance
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Word count: ~12,000
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: none to speak of, a fairly large doze of (resolved) angst and a good doze of fluff.
Disclaimer: I'm just playing in Christopher Nolan's sandpit.
Summary: Eames makes Arthur want to believe in happy endings again.
A/N: And so, I've taken the plunge. Written for the inception_kink meme, for this prompt: Arthur is "that guy", the one that makes girls realize they're lesbians and guys that they're straight. Arthur resists Eames' more serious advances because he doesn't want to lose what little they have. I've tweaked the prompt a little, and good god, 12,000 words for a kink meme fill, I don't even know. This has been re-written a little from the original post, and cleaned up a lot. Title comes from Ol' Blue Eyes' song of the same name.


( I Won't Dance )

So, I've been trawling through the Inception fandon (as I tend to do these days), and I have read two things that have totally made my day today. One is bofish's brilliant, impassionate defence of smart!Eames, which btw is required reading for any fandom writer who wants to dip their toes into writing the most complicated character in the film (that would be Eames :D). There is nothing in that post I disagree with. The entire thing is completely spot-on and inspiring as all hell. When I finally do take the plunge and write an Inception fanfic (once all my committments are done so I can devote it my full attention), this post will be open in another window to consult with frequently. Eames, I am impressed.

Another is bookshop's request in the fourth round of the Inception Kink meme, which really made me sit up and take notice, because nevermind Arthur, it describes me to a T. It's a request for Arthur as sapiosexual, or being turned on by intelligence and smarts, no matter the gender. In other words:

Arthur likes boys, and Arthur likes girls. But the one thing that gets him hotter than anything else is intelligence. If he has any type at all, it's confident, educated, well-read, multi-cultural, and sophisticated, and unafraid to show it.

This is me. This is what I have been struggling to articulate to aurrai all this time over PM. Sometimes it takes someone else pointing it out for you to twig to, and this is the case here. Suddenly, I can put a name to all my vague thoughts on the matter that I could never quite pinpoint. Wow, I can't wait to read the fill for that request! And rest assured, this idea WILL be popping up in my fanfics from now on.