all my keysmash are belong to you

+ OH MY HOLY FUCK: steampunk_nusantara -- a communal worldbuilding thingie for a STEAMPUNK SOUTHEAST ASIA. It kind of reminds me of a play-it-by-ear Museum at Purgatory. We inventory made-up artifacts! Fictional non-fiction! EXCUSE ME WHILE I HAVE THE VAPORS.

STEAMPUNK. SOUTHEAST. ASIA. My first contribution is a positive review of a questionable book. My first thought was actually, "Steampunk jeepneys would be so badass." Jeepneys* are already pretty trippy to begin with. Xzibit can learn a thing or two from them about pimping one's ride. And jeepneys all steampunked up? LIFE, PLEASE PROVIDE.

* Jeepneys are what happens when the American jeeps left in the Philippines after WW2 are pimped out for public transportation. Which begs the question: steampunk WW2?? GIMME. Keysmash capslock forever! \o/


+ In sorta related news, here's an experiment. Said experiment is me writing interrelated drabbles in French and Bahasa Indonesia. I'm not super comfortable in either language, but writing anything in them has been something I've wanted to do for a while, just to see if I can, to maybe ease into it. If you speak either of these languages, please feel free to correct my grammar and phrasing and stuff! I would love to improve. (Fic: making me engage in things I would otherwise never get around to.)

So I guess the drabbles could be missing scenes from Bring Out Your Dead, or something. Or otherwise, just 219 words about two guys road trippin' through the End of Days. I'm not quite sure what to think of the fact that I seem to be more comfortable writing in French than I am in Indonesian. I'm that estranged from my mothertongue, it seems.

I started catching up on Lost and I might have to picspam the shit out of 'Some Like It Hoth' because everything Miles Straume does is like rainbows in my heart. Miiiiiiles.

In other news, here is a fic. It's the first time I've written anything akin to a whodunnit plot. There is actually something for the characters to do besides get over some feelings! Though there is some of that too. So here we go, I guess!

The title turns out to be from "Will You Smile Again" by Trail of Dead, after all.


Heaven Sent You Downstream
Supernatural. Dean/Castiel, Sam. PG13. Spoilers through 5x04. Much love and thanks to inveterate sexyfaces serialkarma and sgrio for betareading.
Half casefic and half 'The End' episode tag in which Dean 1) investigates some disappearances in the mountains, and 2) finds it difficult to leave the future behind. Takes place after Castiel spirits Dean away from the motel, and before Dean meets up with Sam. ~11,100 words (Part 1: ~5000 words)

( Dean introduces himself as Special Agent Plant and catches himself before he says, 'And this is my partner, Agent Page.' )

* My post on personal stories got picked up for the 4th Asian Women Blog Carnival \o/, which I'm pretty excited about. It looks like there's some good stuff over there so def check it out. This year's theme is "storytelling, or reclaiming our selves through our words". Unsurprisingly the first thing I read is a poem about Manila and, speaking of land=body, zempasuchil, remember that Hetalia fic you never wrote that I gave you feedback for? 'When the Waters Rose'? This is kind of like that, but set in the Philippines. "our middle ground exists / where floodwaters rise / to meet sinking shores"

* I'm beginning to wonder if I forgot about something important that happened last season in Heroes, 'cos what the hell is going on. On top of dumb superpowers. Why haven't I dropped this show yet?

* I'm assuming that things like Queen Victoria, Demon Hunter are riding on the coattails of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. I'm not a big Victorian lit fan nor am I a zombie nerd overmuch, but I do like the idea of the two of them fused together. So. Are these books any good?

* I'm not even in Trek fandom, but I just read and liked this fic by bravecows, which is set in a Starfleet Academy in Malaysia, featuring two female OCs who talk about why is it that only Westerners ever get assigned to certain missions and also why the Starfleet computer can't understand their accents. In other reccing ball news, I am also a fan of this Ty Lee/Azula fic and this Arthur/Gwen fic.

* The world needs more Ty Lee/Azula.

* I could make a legit Merlin reaction post but I'm kind of pooped, so have this two-word review instead: GAAAAIIIIUUUUUSSSSSSS! PENNNNNDRAGONNNNNSSSSS!

* fantasyecho embeds YouTube vids of Western pop songs being played on traditional Malay/Indonesian instruments. *_*

* And, for the hell of it: ( mash-up recs! ) You guys got mash-up recs to share?

* I'm gonna hunt for dinner and send at least one job application before bed. (man i was so productive last week)

I reckon I should be organizing my data sets, but then I listened to Chimamanda Adichie talk about the dangers of a single story (via heather11483 and deepad) and my heart just swelled. I was originally going to flock this post because it has a lot of personal information in it, but then I realized that would be kind of defeating the point. So, here it is.

( thoughts on my own stories: the ones I couldn't own, the ones I didn't want to own, the ones I had to fight for, the ones I still have to fight for )

So in the spirit of this, I'm gonna do new twist on an old meme. I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away. And I will answer in autobiographical narrative form.

Reuters has a news page for the Indonesia earthquake, as well as a listing of relief organizations involved with its relief, including Americares and Save the Children. They also have one for Typhoon Ondoy/Ketsana. Thanks for the heads-up, mrinalinee! I previously posted donation links for Typhoon Ketsana/Ondoy here.

I started doing this meme forever ago and I'm still getting through it:

day 01 | a song
day 02 | a picture
day 03 | a book/ebook/fanfic
day 04 | a site
day 05 | a youtube clip
day 06 | a quote
day 07 | whatever tickles your fancy

Wondermark posted this a few weeks ago: The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello

It's a creepy, steampunkesque, shadow puppets-ish 30-min animation involving a failed navigator, a mad scientist, a terrible plague, strange beasts, and of course, zeppelins.

My favorite morally dubious sketchball finally got a comm of his own, asthebrowarches, which is perhaps the best Merlin community name to date. Party on, Gaius.

Words cannot express how much I want (and possibly need) The Manga Guide to Statistics. God, if only I had known about it last semester.

Speaking of comics, I went to my first Comic Con last weekend. I'm not usually a comics convention-going person, but my friend was working the audio equipment, so I went. One of Manila's most awesome bands performed, but unfortunately I only arrived as they were finishing their set. (Okay, so this band -- Gorgoro -- are awesome mainly because of one thing: they have a puppet for a frontman. A puppet who is only trying to find his estranged father, yes he has backstory.) There was also a large "Goodbye, Tita Cory" banner that people were writing farewell messages on. And I got some nice loot! ( 'Chiaroscuro: The Private Lives of Leonardo da Vinci', 'Trese', 'Skyworld: Apocrypha', aaand )

And I'm not putting Purchase #4 under the cut, because.

4. My faaaaavorite purchase is a 4-part miniseries called Elmer by Gerry Alanguilan, which is an alternate history in which chickens became sentient. That's right, on February 3, 1979 -- or the Great Awakening -- chickens gained human consciousness. I prefer parts 3 and 4 because the allegory becomes less in-your-face, but the whole thing is quite intruiging. The premise is awesome and each part quite short that I couldn't stop. Gaiman-approved!

SENTIENT CHICKENS. CHICKEN MARRIAGE. EXTREMIST CHICKEN RIGHTS GROUPS. Hiding your chicken friends in the basement because otherwise your neighbors would kill them for being abominations! The protagonist gets beat up at school because he wouldn't cluck like his bullies told him to! BIRD FLU. omg.

The first part is available online here.

I admit, at first I wasn't sure whether Elmer is set in the Philippines (it is) because the characters have what I consider to be an American way of talking. Really, I feel I should've figured it out from the plants and architecture, and I shouldn't have been so unhinged by 'Americanisms', 'cos I mean, look at me. I drop U's, use Z's, and do your mom-with-an-O every night. The English in the Philippines is, so to speak, more American. I'm still deconstructing my own dichotomies.


I've been slow in replying to comments, sorry :(. Obviously the solution is to whore for even more comments. Meme me up, Scotty: Top 5 me!

Hey, remember yonks ago when I said there should be a Merlin crossover community? Someone was listening! BEHOLD: merlin_xovers \o/!

First things first! zempasuchil and I are erasing each other's fic, and her erasure of my Merlin OT4 fic, The Ink Still Drying, is Then Sing. <3 Prettyyyyyy. HOORAY ERASURES.

My erasure is still in progress, because I spent the past week being TREMENDOUSLY BUSY. The week was equal parts awesome and equal parts stresssssssss. Here are some pictures and a couple of thoughts:



( to the glistening eastern sea )