thank you for your interest in whatever we matched on! here's some thoughts to help you with your chosen assignment :D

GENERAL LIKES REGARDLESS OF SHIP/CHARACTER:

- awkward first times (date, kiss, sex, hand-holding, conversations, etc)
- obvious crushes
- vomiting and/or sickfic where the one that's sick is the one that's usually very concerned about self-image and/or easily flustered
- situational humiliation (e.g. becoming nauseous in public, trying to hide a boner in public, blurting something out, coming untouched/ejaculating in pants, etc)
- premature orgasm and/or multiple orgasms
- breeding/pregnancy kink
- trans characters
- bossy bottoms
- priest kink. seduce that priest!!! ditto teacher kink. love figures of authority abusing their power, but also potentially being abused :3c role reversals are very tasty~
- related to the above, uniforms! generally wwii era or earlier
- with trans men, i looooove gushing (aka squirting but that word makes me uncomfortable lol. you get the idea tho) and it can be part of orgasm or something preceding orgasm, i just really enjoy that being part of the whole sexual package.
- dubcon! i can enjoy noncon too but it's more situational, so dubcon is the easier way to go. intoxication, manipulation, mixed messages, being in denial.... if it's in-character, it's good!

rituals (1977) - mitzi/anyone

- i adore this movie and i adore mitzi. i do love the idea of mitzi having pre-canon "no homo" interactions with marty, but i would also be very curious to see how people interpret his interactions with any of the other characters from the movie! he and harry clearly have a rich and complicated history that harry doesn't want to talk about and mitzi only brings up when he's trying to guilt harry or seek solidarity in shared experiences.... and he's known the other doctors for a long time as well. hell, if you want to explore whether something might happen with the pilot before their breakfast, be my guest. his reaction to the pilot showing off that surgery scar was kind of indecipherable....

- i enjoy the way he drops a slur or two in the movie like he's scared of looking at what he could become, but i don't think he'd noncon another man. just give me mitzi being a catty and confused repressed middle-aged man!

- see also: multipurpose dear creator letter

DO NOT WANT: please don't do anything erotic with his death. the scene in general, sure, with the rope bondage and everything, but not the actual process of being killed and dying.

reanimator - carl hill/herbert west

- they are both unapologetically exploitative people in different ways. they hate each other because they're more similar than they'd like to admit! they don't like the funhouse mirror being held up to them! hill wanting what he can't have, west wanting to do what he's told he shouldn't, hill's jealousy of west's youthful drive, the endless possibilities of hypnosis.....

- hill force-femming a (trans) west is classic, always love that. west somehow penetrating hill's esophagus, whether it's the part still attached to hill's body or the part that's attached to his head, and hill being shocked and ashamed by how good it feels to what's left of his senses/psyche would be chef kiss.

- these are nasty people so go as nasty as you want! i love misuse of human organs for sexual purposes, vomit, reagent/drug abuse, mind control, making dan sit in the cuck chair, evil sexy misgendering of a trans man, object insertion, hill unexpectedly orgasming while being decapitated...basically if it would fit in the movie i will love it.

DO NOT WANT: no scat and no consensual daddy dom stuff, pls, any daddy dom stuff must be in the context of hill being a creep.

- see also: multipurpose dear creator letter

teen titans (2003 cartoon) - brother blood/cyborg

- ok brother blood is such a weird guy in the teen titans cartoon i need more of him. he just wants to have a nice school! but he's also obsessed with this teenager to the point of wanting to emulate him?? and cyborg is only briefly won over. the desperation of this man... my favorite dynamic is when blood has cyborg cornered somehow and his blatant thirst is not deterred by cyborg's repeated refusals, but he still wants cyborg to like him!

- love this staying one-sided. also love the fucked up teacher/student dynamic. so sexy. please also feel free to lean into the pseudo-religious elements! i do prefer brother blood before his body modding but that could be fun to explore too. something about modeling his new body off of cyborg's in more ways than one...?

DO NOT WANT: no daddy dom stuff please.

find the lady (1976) - kopek/broom

- they are both so incompetent it's adorable. broom berates kopek all the time but at the end kopek offers to donate his vacation time to broom! they should accidentally end up sharing a bed and things escalate without them meaning to make it happen. slapstick mutual masturbation. misunderstandings culminating in broom bottoming and he keeps bitching but loves it actually.

- i love vomit and piss and i can see one of them making a mess somehow so the other one has to care for him and also clean up.

- feel free to include the bruce larousse character! that actor is an absolute delight and i am so curious about broom's interest in bruce's drag getup.

DO NOT WANT: no daddy dom stuff please, unless it's played for laughs.

- warning if you choose to watch the movie: there's some racist jokes involving an east-asian character, but it's not nearly as bad as what's in 16 candles. there's also a joke about a black cabaret performer in white-face. it's all oddly self-aware (the jokes are usually more about the white characters/viewers' expectations) so it's mostly just. very strange lol.

rpf - john candy/lawrence dane

- they worked together on three movies before candy's career really took off, and there's a very touching quote from dane in a book about candy:

“He celebrated too hard,” remembers Dane. “He opened up the faucet and it all came out. It was as if he said to himself, ‘My mortality is on a string, so I might as well throw caution to the wind.' Unfortunately he attracted people who wanted to take advantage of him. And it seemed to me he was just terribly hard on himself.”

i'd love to see something that explores how dane came away with this impression of him.

- feel free to lean into the 14-year age gap!

DO NOT WANT: no noncon or daddy dom stuff please. any dubcon should be abortive and not go beyond intoxicated groping. vomit ok but no other non-sexual fluids with these two please.

smiling friends - charlie/allan

- these two are so awkward with each other it gives me life. charlie has a hard time reading allan and allan finds charlie a little easier to read except for the times charlie just comes at him from out of left field and they get into a fight. a sexy fight. i like the idea of charlie being the older one. allan isn't very humanoid compared to charlie or pim so please have fun with fantasy/alien genitalia if you go in that direction!

– i love it when they're in mundane situations and it goes sideways. the gang goes to the laundromat and they forget something important. charlie's trying to give himself a t shot and allan startles him so he messes up the injection. allan coming back to charlie's apartment after examining it during s2e5. what about the rest of the wedding at the beginning of that episode, before or after the ceremony? did charlie try to put any drunken moves on allan? did he throw up in front of allan? on him??

- if you prefer musical inspo: tom cardy's "mixed messages" is them (charlie is the singer)

dc comics - jimmy olsen/superman

-i specifically like the version of them in the 1950s comics, where jimmy has the fan club and is constantly getting himself in trouble and trusting superman will come save him. he's canonically a teenager so as long as he's under 20 you can do whatever :3

- jimmy likes crossdressing. he likes it a lot. maybe something where he poses as a girl hoping for superman's attention but instead it lands him in hot water and supes has to perform a cool rescue and decide whether to tell jimmy he knew all along....

- i like superman being awkward and not sure what to do with jimmy's advances, regardless of whether it's one-sided or mutual. i also like the idea of him gently reciprocating because he does care for this kid.... maybe as an alien he doesn't fully appreciate the gravity of what it can mean to have sex with someone, let alone another man?

- you can read several of the comics online! i would be so tickled to get something in this style, whether written or visual.

DO NOT WANT: no daddy dom stuff please. no jimmy transformations involving weight gain.

yugioh arcv - shingo/gongenzaka

- i am fascinated by gongenzaka growing to tolerate and even support shingo. how much of that is for yuuya's sake? how much of that is because shingo allows himself to be changed by yuuya? by gongenzaka?

- it would be really cute for yuuya to make them go on a get-along date and they do in fact end up getting along, even if it's a bit of a disaster at first.

- please feel free to have background yuuya/shingo in this! background shingo/yuzu is also fine :D shingo throws himself at a lot of people but he does love yuuya and the people that yuuya loves. no mentions of sora or dennis tho please lol.

-i live for trans shingo. i will die for trans shingo. him wanting to prove his own kind of masculinity against gongenzaka's, especially if it includes him trying to assert sexual dominance and topping from the bottom? i could read endless variations on that theme.

- gongenzaka is big. trans shingo is a size queen. 2 + 2 = incredible sex. if shingo can get him to cooperate.

DO NOT WANT: no sora and no dennis. no blushing uke shingo. no feederism please.

- see also: multipurpose dear creator letter

jjba - kira/hayato

- the bathroom scene. the scene where kira is taunting hayato about the time loop. need i say more.

Challenge #4

Since this is the start of a new year, this challenge will be to set your own goals! Of course we can all make large or ambitious goals, remember that small and/or short goals are also good! Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

- i want to write and draw more often. signed up to getyourwordsout for a boost with my writing habits, and just now my partner was talking to me about how i used to draw a lot more back in 2014-2016 so that gave me the idea to start with baby steps and get back into doodling while watching something that doesn't require my full attention. even just once a month should be good. there's also my art piece for ygorarepairs but i started that last year, so....

- make progress with uploading backlogged reviews from dreamwidth to lawrencedane.com. might need to redo some of the screenshots since idr if i kept the uncropped originals when doing the earliest ones, but i'll enjoy getting those again if needed.

- and speaking of my man larry, maybe a nice shorter-term goal would be to get a post up somewhere about "heavenly bodies" in time for his birthday. i've already done some background research on the production and reception, i've watched it once, and now i have the blu-ray so image/video grabs should be a breeze. biggest obstacle really is deciding how to structure the review since he didn't act in it, lol.

- finish my makuderu fst and upload it to the appropriate comm(s) since i started it a couple years ago so it's time to stop sitting on it!!

- another shorter-term goal: do year 3 of my hellsing mini exchange with more promo and see how it goes so i can contribute that experience to a citruscon panel about organizing fan events.

five goals for 2025, nice. i think these are decent low-pressure goals that'll still help me feel accomplished no matter how stressful the rest of my year ends up being.

the "is this worth watching for lawrence dane" rating: 0/5

he doesn't show up until an hour into the movie (-1); he only has the one scene (-1); the movie's script is weak and the direction is a hot mess (-2); it has charlie sheen (-100000).

the plot: a potentially interesting biopic about the brothers responsible for "behind the green door" and key players in the onset of the brief era known as porno chic. the movie kind of gets into the legality & ethics of it all but cares more about the interpersonal drama between the brothers and doesn't do justice to either topic. maybe if you go into this with rock-bottom expectations you'll find it enjoyable despite charlie sheen?

despite having an almost two-hour runtime it feels like the movie was trying to cram in too much and didn't have a clear vision beyond "check out these two assholes". like, why even bother to incorporate dane's turn as a mafioso if they're not coming back to the mafia poaching the movie due to lax intellectual property/copyright protections for erotica? what was the point? don't get me wrong, great look for him, fun performance, but why was it necessary? there's a lot of scenes that seem like they're supposed to be connected to something else but ultimately aren't. disappointing.

( scene starts with him holding up a nudie mag so enjoy but also beware )

this time i swear next review will be the littlest hobo episode. he was very cute and charming and one of the main characters to boot. a great palate cleanser after the trainwreck of this movie.

the "is this worth watching for lawrence dane" rating: 0/5

he was listed right after hal holbrook on imdb, and holbrook's is the last "featured" name on the poster, so i thought he might still have a handful of scenes. he had One scene and it was less than three minutes long not even 20 minutes into the movie. i watched the whole thing because i was so sure he was gonna come back given the film's apparent emphasis on the main character's political wheeling and dealing. nope. maybe his character was more prominent in the book?

the plot: i actually watched this while it was on the criterion channel and i still don't understand why it was on there. it was basically just a hallmark movie with slightly better production values and acting. nothing conceptually original or aesthetically inspired to redeem it like scanners. boringly broad social stereotypes (the uptight yuppie falls in love with the hippie radical! he has man pain because she dies following her dreams and he compromises his own dreams so he's seeing or hallucinating her ghost out of white guilt! or maybe she didn't actually die, dun dun dun, waking the dead more like wake me up i'm dead asleep) and the pacing is strange. there's moments with reasonably striking cinematography but they're few and far in-between; i can see how this would've been a better movie in the right hands, but as it is i really don't think this was worth watching all the way through.

the best part was dane sharing the screen with holbrook again. like a rituals au where mitzi survived and he went into politics with harry, lol. even the dynamic between them was similar and dane's character said "fag" just like mitzi in rituals. full circle! here's the scene so you can see for yourself, and the obligatory screenshots are below.

( at least they gave him a suit that isn't comically oversized like the one they made him wear in his tropical heat episode )

it's been way too long since i felt like i had the time and brainpower to sit down and do one of these. feels great to do it again even if this one is on the short side. think next time i'm gonna review his episode of the littlest hobo because it was unexpectedly VERY erotic. he gets chained up!! look forward to it :3

the past couple weeks have been mentally exhausting and spiritually draining etc etc but i tried using this past weekend to recover and then i have most of this week off so i'm looking forward to doing some writing. it's really easy to get into a cycle of "i feel bad so it's hard for me to write, but not writing makes me feel bad, but when i feel bad i can't write" (ad infinitum). so when i saw tempural post this writers meme it sounded like a great idea to do it myself. i'm good enough, i'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like my writing. so if you've also been having a hard time, consider giving this a try!

Rules: go through your last 5 posted fics and share the first and last line. No context.

1: surface reading

first: Bumblebee got there just too late.

last: He had bigger things to worry about at the moment.

2: the hands of other men

first: Maurice had heard of Father Wilhelm Burnell before.

last: “I’ve heard of you.”

3: wartime is no time to grieve

first: Enrico Maxwell was dead.

last: There was nothing God could do now that would be worse than this night.

4: chapter two of "Malis Avibus": Love in Suffering

first: West of Versailles the land was gripped by plague, bubonic fingers digging deep even into fortified towns like Loudun.

last: They were neglecting their duties in their unseemly excitement, Sister Bakura thought as they watched the young ladies too busy giggling over Loudun’s most notorious priest to give any thought to their devotions.

5: anybody else's touch

first: Amelda wasn’t sure how he’d ended up here under Kaiba’s boot.

last: The certainty helped him hold his head high on his way out past all the employees’ knowing eyes.

ficortreat

miscellanium's Door

DW username: miscellanium

Light is on for: anybody!

What's in the Bowl?

pics of my cats

drabbles (strictly 100 words)

weenie-approved horror movie recommendations from someone new to horror movies, or recommendations for pre-1980s english-language queer media

a random pic from my downloads/meme folders

Let Me Know:

for the cat pics, which flavor (black, tuxedo-calico, orange) and packaging (flattering, unflattering, cryptid-style) or just say you want a surprise!

drabble prompts - a word, fandom/characters/ships or, if you'd like original work, a mood to go with the word prompt

what you'd enjoy/dislike in a horror movie, or what you're looking for in ~vintage~ queer media

if there is any content you would NOT want to see from my downloads/memes (e.g., nothing nsfw? nothing fandom-specific? is context for the weak?)

Other info:

check out my ao3 or my profile page on dw for fandoms. political rpf prompts for american politics also welcome, lol.
caveats: did not watch spn past season 8 or teen wolf past season 3. inuyasha also an option but i haven't finished the original tv run, only as far as the second movie. have only seen first few episodes of s1 of ofmd, tho have gotten quite a bit via osmosis.

if prompting for a hellsing drabble, my landmine is alucard/anderson. feel free to request literally anything else.

hope you're having a nice october!

ETA: i will post replies to all comers whenever, not limited to october 31!

i'm not a music reviewer by any means. in the past others have encouraged me to write about music i enjoy, since i do like reading reviews whether i agree with them or not - i remember spending hours on progarchives and places like this one guy's website where his rating system didn't use stars or numbers but something that iirc was derived from math or something? i can't find it again unfortunately* - and i'm also very interested in the history/production of a given album and following connections to find cool music by relatively obscure artists (bobb trimble, anyone?), but it's difficult for me to actually write my own reviews because, well... i know i'm not getting the same auditory information as most other people. but here's an unorganized attempt (pitchfork this certainly ain't) so let's see how it goes - aiming high by starting with steely dan even if it means retreading well-trodden ground lol.

apparently steely dan's discography has been experiencing a re-evaluation lately and i had no idea - only found out when i was browsing reviews of donald fagen's solo albums the other day and fell into a rabbit hole. (this brand-new book focusing on the characters in the band's songs sounds interesting and i'll have to see if i can get it from a library first or something - the illustrations are a cool idea, but the author's "don't do drugs, kids" comment at the end of the interview is annoying enough to make me not want to buy the book sight unseen lol.) i grew up mostly hearing about the band as a punchline the same way a lot of other '70s stuff was made into the butt of jokes during the 1990s/early 2000s and never actually listened to them until last year, entirely by chance. i asked my parents recently about their memories of the band and they both said that they remembered some songs being radio hits but didn't have strong opinions either way. they didn't have any of the albums in their record/cd collection when i was a kid even though they did have a fair amount of jazz music. at any rate i'm glad i finally introduced myself to steely dan - i've tended to prefer music with tightly-crafted lyrics that invite closer reading and/or are dense with references&meaning, and steely dan's work fits right in. distinctive voices also tend to feature a lot in my favorites and while i wouldn't put fagen on the same level as orbison/nilsson/mercury/darnielle/etc, he's still recognizable enough for me to hear 'I.G.Y.' on a recommended-for-you playlist and be like, huh, this sounds like steely dan and then look up the singer's name for an oh-shit moment lol.

my favorite of steely dan's albums at this point is the 1980 "gaucho" which, in addition to having a rather notoriously tortured production history, is apparently also their most divisive. some people feel it's too polished and/or too simple compared to earlier work... can't speak to the "polished" sound but if it is relatively simple then that's to its benefit imo - makes it easier to follow what individual instruments are doing so appreciation comes faster. wall-of-sound can be fun but it typically takes me several listens to figure out what i'm even hearing. (thinking about how long it took me to appreciate masato nagai's "wild drive"....)

thematically it feels like a spiritual companion to pulp's "this is hardcore" and that's probably why i'm drawn to it more than the other albums - i've been a big pulp fan for a long time and still go back and forth on whether i like "this is hardcore" or "we love life" best, but i've not found anything else that really reminds me of the latter. "gaucho" and "this is hardcore" have similar themes of dissolution and longing, with less defiance than in the earlier albums from either band. the songwriters for both tend to simultaneously make fun of and empathize with their seedy male subjects - but they're not necessarily asking the listener to sympathize. their lyrics are more aimed at reminding us that we're all capable of being terrible to each other in one way or another, and that beneath the fucked-up actions there's still a person there who's hurting. sometimes, anyway. other times it seems like they're just having fun writing about creeps, and i can dig that too! both titles are also almost concept albums, tightly wrapped around a unity of sound and theme that each band's earlier (or later!) albums don't quite have, which is another thing that makes the overall listening experience that much more rewarding imo.

steely dan continued to revisit these themes, of course - 'things i miss the most' from "everything must go" is a real fucking earworm with their signature sensitive-yet-sardonic lyrics - but "gaucho" as a whole is so laser-focused that it comes across like a collection of short stories by raymond carver with more of a sideways sense of humor. and i'm seeing now that there's some who class carver as "dirty realism" and that midnight cowboy is considered a great example of the subgenre, which tracks since i adore both the herlihy book and the schlesinger film.... i don't know if steely dan would fit the literary definition here but there's a definite throughline with regards to subject matter that i find interesting.

anyway, back to the music: this is a short album, easy to listen to all the way through in sequence as intended, though i can also understand why people might not enjoy that experience much. to continue the short story comparison, it's a bit like flannery o'connor - great in individual doses, but if you sit and read a full collection of her in one go then you might find it a bit repetitive after a while. (not my personal opinion! one i've seen other people express, though, including people whose opinions on writing i tend to respect even when we disagree.) so imo if you only listen to one from this album, make it 'hey nineteen'. i'll talk a bit about each track below, including why that one is my favorite.

( you gotta shake it )