Ruth Sadelle Alderson

Hiya, Dreamwidth friends! It is time for another Ruth spews thoughts about fannish things post. This is a real person version; I have not ruled out the possibility of a TV/movies/books version too.


Eldest Direction

First, Louis Tomlinson. His album has a release date! lakeeffectgirl and I have tickets to two back-to-back shows! His face is adorable!

One of his recent singles is "Kill My Mind." The first time I listened to it, I kept thinking his voice sounded like someone else, and it took me a bit to place that it reminded me of Brian Molko from Placebo. I went on a whole teenage music nostalgia journey (no idea how Louis feels about Placebo, but I'm sure he'd be pleased that I listened to some Oasis), and then turned it into a Tumblr post no one read. (That's a joke. I mean, it's true no one read it, but I don't really care that they didn't.) I learned two things from that exercise: 1. I know all the words to "Champagne Supernova." 2. There is a limit to how many videos you can embed into a Tumblr text post.

His most recent single is "We Made It," and I cannot tell you how many feelings I have about this song. It's a love song about his partner where he reminisces about visiting her at uni: "Share a single bed and tell each other what we dream about / Things we'd never say to someone else out loud." Friends, friends, I can't tell you how much I love that. It's a love song where the key is talking to each other and building emotional intimacy! Plus the bedsharing! My other favorite lyric from it is "Never comin' down with your hand in mind." Handholding! Ugh, so many of my favorite things all in one song. But also, beyond that, I've been thinking about how few love songs, particularly love songs by men, are about the emotional intimacy of building a relationship. This might be the most romantic song I've heard in years. I also recommend this acoustic version. Tumblr's auto-looping of videos is usually annoying, but in this case, yes, I do want to listen to that song over and over again.

One of the things people have latched onto in this round of promo is Louis's hatred of avocados. He said in this interview that if you liked them five years ago, you're fine, but he's very opposed to the trendiness of them. I am dying to know how his hatred of avocados goes over with his kid. His kid is a Southern Californian; he's going to eat avocados at friends' houses if not at his mom's.

Side note about his kid's mom: I can't tell if she actually looks about twelve years old in this picture or if it's just that the top of her dress looks like something I would have sen people wear in my childhood in the 80s.


Designer Direction

Next, Harry Styles. (He used to be fluffy bunny direction, but if he's not going to be a fluffy bunny - see below for the most recent video - he needed a new name, and I didn't want to use lakeeffectgirl's Gucci Direction on my public Twitter where people searching for Gucci might find it.) I read an excellent Twitter thread comparing the most recent Rolling Stone profile of Harry to the most recent Guardian profile of Taylor Swift. I agree with so much of it, and I have some additions:

• In addition to the contrast of "Just date amazing women, or men, or whatever, who are going to fuck you up, and explore and have an adventure and let it affect you and write songs about it." as a positive thing for Harry with the criticism Taylor got for doing the same thing, the other thing I hate about it is the framing of other people, particularly women, as fodder for a man's art. The women he dates are real people with their own real lives. They do not exist for him to write music about.


• There's a whole bit of the article about how he made his second album while doing a lot of psychedelics: "The chocolate edibles were kept in the studio fridge, right next to the blender." There is zero acknowledgment of the overlapping privileges that mean he could not only do that but tell a reporter about it. On the whole, famous rich white people don't get in trouble for illegal drug use, and men don't have to worry about what other people might do to them if they're intoxicated the way women do.


• I was really underwhelmed by the bit where he says, about the End Gun Violence and Black Lives Matter stickers on his guitar, "Everyone in that room is on the same page and everyone knows what I stand for. I'm not saying I understand how it feels. I’m just trying to say, 'I see you,'" especially because it's lumped in with the part about him waving pride flags on stage. Look, I know everyone has to make their own choices about coming out and being out, but personally, I found this really disappointing. The vibe I got from his whole pride flags thing was that he was one of us, and this reads more like he's just a straight guy who's cool with other people. I mean, I'm pretty sure he's not actually a completely straight guy (based on the "Medicine" lyrics and the "Lights Up" video), but personally as a queer person, I really want him to acknowledge that he's one of us. Also, I'm really angry that the message of most celebrity coming outs is that it's okay to be out as long as you're already successful, and while he's already passed that level of success, he is still kind of a baby and I wouldn't be so irked about it now as I expect to be if he comes out at a much later date.

Do I sound disillusioned about him? I kind of am. He was also the host and musical guest on SNL, and his opening monologue has a "joke" that's a dig at Zayn, and apparently there is controversy about whether or not it's "just a joke." People, have you listened to "Perfect"? That would be a great song except for the part where they - including Harry - decided not to cut the bit that's clearly a dig at Taylor Swift. Harry has no problem shading someone he used to love. I know people want him to be better than that, but he isn't.

Harry also has two recent singles. I was kind of eh about "Lights Up." This is probably partly because of the video: I'm a lesbian; I don't want to see him shirtless and oiled up. (This post is basically the only thing I love about that video.) I like "Watermelon Sugar" better. I'm also pretty sure it's about going down on a girl. He did say the new album is all about having sex and feeling sad.

lakeeffectgirl and I have tickets to one of his shows, which I'm excited about! I didn't see him last year even though I really wanted to, and I'm all for BFF fangirl adventures.


The Other Directions

It seems like if I'm talking about the direction children, I should talk about all of them, so here's one bullet point for each of the others plus a bonus one:

• I am deeply unimpressed with Liam's song where he is an extremely rich guy talking about how he needs to make money. Deeply unimpressed.


• It's cracking me up that Zayn has a song where he repeatedly sings, "Light me up" just after Harry's "Lights Up." I know it's not really similar at all, but I'm still amused.


• Niall is the only one of them whose new music I've heard on the radio. (Actually, first I just kept hearing them saying that was/up next is his song, but now I've been in the car at the right time to catch it.) The station that's been playing him is the one that was probably the most likely to have played Louis's new music before they changed format from alternative to more mainstream pop.


• Bonus list item: I don't really like Shawn Mendes's music, except that Niall posted video on Instagram of himself dancing to "If I Can't Have You," and now every time I hear it on the radio, I think of Niall dancing and sing along.

Directions Fandom

At the point that directions fandom flipped out about my de-aging story, I was signed up for an exchange and had written about a thousand words of the story for it. I emailed the mods to see if I should stay in or drop out of the exchange, and while I was waiting for them, I started thinking about the things I would do with the story if I weren't using it for an exchange. By the time they got back to me, I decided I really wanted to write a version of the story with all the options I'd thought about, so I wrote something else for the exchange and ran the Choose Your Own Adventure Fic Fest so I would have some structure to actually finish the story version with options. As of this writing, that story has seven kudos, which is hilarious to me. The choose your own adventure format was new to me, and it was the first time in my 20+ years in fandom that I wrote tentacle porn, so I'm happy with it. I also learned in the process of planning the fest that fanfiction.net bans choose your own adventure stories, which is the kind of thing that surely has some sort of story behind it.


The Jonas Brothers

An update to the last time I talked about #JoBrosRenaissance2019: we went to see them! lakeeffectgirl, Sky, and I went to the show in Milwaukee in September. It was so great. So great. Being there with two of my best friends in a crowd full of 17,000 other women and girls who were there to cheer and sing and dance out of sheer love was the greatest thing.

We skipped the first opener, but got there in time for Bebe Rexha, who was the second opener. I love Bebe so much. Like the last time I saw her, she brought a dancing audience member up on stage with her. We'd noticed him in the pit before that, and he continued to be a great dancer on stage, to the point that Bebe was startled and delighted. I (again) cried when she did "Meant to Be." I like the song okay - I'll sing along to it on the radio - but it's pretty heteronormative and a little country in a bad way. It becomes something different when Bebe does it solo, and I have a lot of feelings about it.

The JoBros are amazing, of course. They'd have to be; they've been doing this since they were kids. We watched the Chasing Happiness documentary the night before, so I was already having feelings about them. They're so good on stage. It was fun and felt very rapid-paced in a good way. I am also in awe of the stagecraft: there were curved screens behind the stage that moved. They came down from the ceiling on a platform and up from under the stage on individual platforms. The B stage turned slowly and raised very high up in the air. They had confetti and lights above their stage that matched their music. They also had pyrotechnics, both some sparkly fireworks type and jets of flame for "Burnin' Up." I'd never been to a show with pyrotechnics before, and I was amazed that we could feel the heat from the flames twenty rows up. There was someone in the crowd near the B stage with a sign that said, "Frankie is our favorite Jonas Brother," and it kept getting shown on the screens because it was right behind the JoBros when they were on the B stage.

We didn't get a lot of sleep after the concert, because we had to be up early to get me to the airport, so we were all very tired and pretty quiet in the car in the morning. It wasn't a bad tired; I was exhausted, and I felt so incredibly happy.


WIPS

Current works in progress:

• Harry/Zayn girl uni AU. They're both girls and there are a lot of sex scenes. I have no idea what I'm doing with it except planning another sex scene sometime after the one I'm in the middle of.


• Canon partner girl AU (meaning: girl!Louis/Eleanor). I originally wanted a bit where girl!Louis is the drunk girl in a bathroom telling Eleanor she's beautiful, and then I, of course, decided it should be about Eleanor's queer identity discovery. Many thanks to Eleanor and her bff for posting Instagram photos that make for good references for what queer Eleanor might be like.


• Still Star-Crossed modern AU with hickeys. After not working on this for something like a year, I went in and finished the scene I was on. It now only needs one more sex scene to be done. Will I ever write that scene? Who knows.

Current works not in progress:

• Yuletide. I have an idea for a backup story on one of the other fandoms my recipient requested, but no solid ideas about a story for the fandom we matched on, which I really would like to write something for. I can tell I'm starting to get back to normal after my dental surgery, so maybe by next week I will figure this out.


• Girl!Louis/Harry. I got to a point just before a sex scene and stopped working on it, but maybe "Watermelon Sugar" will inspire me to write that sex scene where Harry goes down on Louis while she's wearing a skirt.


• Harry/Nick or Harry & Nick kid fic. This was going to be a story where they're not together but they have a kid together. I don't think I'm ever going back to it, so I guess I should wip amnesty it at some point.


• GBBO fic. I am probably not going to write the story where Henry dates a girl and Michael pines and then the girl breaks up with Henry and tells him she can't give him the kind of sex he wants and Henry tells David and Nik about it and they set him up with a friend of theirs to find out how he likes being dommed by a guy and then Michael kisses him and he says that doesn't want to risk falling for someone who doesn't like the same things he does again and then Michael says he's thought about having Henry on his knees for him and telling him he's a good boy and then they live happily ever after with Michael being Henry's sweet and gentle dom, but I am going to think about it a lot.

This was the first time in a decade that I didn't post one thing I was thankful for every day from November 1 through Thanksgiving. I didn't just forget. I thought about it. Last year, it wasn't fun; it felt like a chore and I really struggled with it. I didn't think I could do it again this year without struggling with it, which defeats the purpose for me.

I am thankful for how the world has changed for the better for queer people, and I had three things remind me of that recently in a way that are a contrast to both the unrelenting tales of horror I'm trying to stop constantly reading and the DADT-era GK fic it's probably time to stop re-reading constantly.

1. Last month I saw Bebe Rexha in concert in Sacramento (which was amazing and wonderful). Because of where I was in the venue and because I wasn't in a hurry, the floor was half-empty by the time I started making my way toward the exit. There were two men in the middle of the empty part of the floor kissing. No one was paying them any attention, like it was totally normal.

2. A gay, divorced (from his ex-husband) college friend narrated some sort of anniversary of the Marine Corps founding event at his overseas State Department post, which is a sentence I couldn't have ever imagined being able to type.

3. The first thing I saw about the results of Australia's marriage equality postal survey was a Facebook post from Christian Kane where he said, "Pretty great to be in Australia on the day they finally vote yes on #marriageequality it's a g'day for Australia!! @supanovaexpo" It's just not what I was expecting from a country singer/tough guy actor, but it reminded me how mainstream support for marriage equality really is now.

Still super into Bebe Rexha's voice. Fuse's embed code did not play nicely with LJ, so you can watch the acoustic performance here.

Summary: "No," Patrick says, "you did fine." He's quiet for a long moment. "Sometimes you just have to tie him up and fuck him."

Notes: This was going to be a kinky threesome sort of story, with lots of things about how each twosome within that threesome works.

Warning/Enticement: Kink.

Story on AO3


( Rock Star )

Summary: Pete glares at Gabe the best he can with his head twisted at a weird angle under Bebe's arm.

Notes: Written for inlovewithnight.

Story on AO3


( Tangled )

Disclaimer: Fictional.
Summary: Gabe and Victoria's first night home from tour.
Note: While this can probably stand alone, it is the third story in a trilogy. The first two are Going Steady and Knocked Up.


( Homecoming )

Summary: Pete's whole body floods with relief. She's going to do it for him, and she'll be good at it - maybe just okay at first, but she has what it takes to be really damn good at it.
Warning/Enticement: Nonsexual kink of the bondage/control/light hair pulling variety.

Notes: This is another of those inlovewithnight posted a picture and then encouraged me sort of stories. The picture in question is this:

( Picture! )

And my original response was: Bebe is like, "yeah, put your hands up with your wrists crossed," and Pete is like, "HANDCUFF POSITION YES I KNOW HOW TO DO THIS." Where is that fic?

After some urging, I wrote her a tiny snippet in the comments on her post, and then I wrote the rest of this for her birthday. I would totally love for someone else to write the epic version of Pete teaching Bebe how to be his domme.


( Down, Down, Quiet )

Once upon a time, inlovewithnight posted this picture:

( Picture! )

I said, "I am especially amused by the one where Travis and the other guy are like, 'Picture taking! Pose!' and Pete is all, 'Doggy!'" This led to a discussion of how Pete was the kid who always had to be reminded to be soft with the kitty. Not that he would want to hurt anyone or anything, just that he was enthusiastic when he wanted to play. And then I wrote a snippet about Gabe warning Bebe about that quality.


( Like a Puppy )

I've been wanting to write this story anyway, and then mourning_night prompted me with "Gabe/Bebe/Victoria - nothing is ever simple," which seemed to fit, so I used that as a nudge to write this.

This is a sequel to Going Steady, but you don't have to read that for this to make sense. There is one more story from this world in my head; I might get to it before this month is over.

Warning: Discussion of abortion.


( Knocked Up )