For all you shatter is our seeming, And in breaking we are free

Not really meta, as such. Just an interesting series of observations I blundered through while considering the following:

Holmes/Watson vs John/Mary (Downey filmes)
Vimes/Vetinari vs Sam/Sybil (Discworld)

The names, I mean, not the pairings themselves.

I was just thinking about this in terms of my having written Sybil/Sam/Havelock and Sherlock/John/Mary. Just noticing the choice of names used for each pairing tag. I noticed it even at the time, when I was putting the threesomes in the headers for the fics and noticed the odd ... stickiness of the names? Just taking those two. The Discworld set, do you say Vimes/Vetinari/Sybil? Vimes/Vetinari/Ramkin? Sam/Sybil/Havelock? With the Holmes set, is it Holmes/Watson/Mary, or Holmes/Watson/Morstan, or Sherlock/John/Mary?

None of them really look right, laid out. And there are a couple of reasons for that, and also a couple of implications, and right now I'm sort of randomly finding this fascinating. Heh. So. Bear with me while I unpick it a little?

Just thinking about fantasy lately, and fantasy on the big and little screens. You know how fantasy TV is back in, these days? And also historical dramas, and stuff like that? What with Game of Thrones and LOTR and The Hobbit and Rome and Vikings and The Borgias and all?

I want to see a TV series of The Queen's Thief series, by Megan Whalen Turner. So much.

This has been noodling around my head for a while, and I just wanted to examine it a little bit. There are ... quite a lot of things you can learn by examining the weapons of choice in the movieverse Company. In fact, and all credit to the costuming team for the movies, I think the weapons used by the dwarves essentially give a portrait of class and clan divides in the Company, and also a degree of the history of the line of Durin post-Smaug. Ah. Allow me to demonstrate?

(WARNINGS: Firstly, I'm not by any means an expert on weapons. This is just going on what impressions I've cobbled together from some study of history and some knowledge of the background of the Company. Bear in mind, I only barely know the major classes of weapons apart, that's the level of knowledge you're dealing with here).

Short ... random burble, really, for oneiriad, who asked the following:

You mentioned in your previous post, how enemy mine hits you right in the gut. Care to elaborate on that?

Enemy mine, for those that don't know, is the TV tropes name for situations in fiction where enemies are forced to work together for a common goal, usually survival, sometimes to defeat common enemies (it's also a fabulous science fiction book and film, look it up, I love it). And, um, this seriously gets me in the id-place, so possibly this will not be very coherent -_-;

Story-wise, the muse isn't coming right now. Given current climate at home, I'm not particularly surprised, but it's somewhat frustrating :(

However, in lieu of fic, does anyone have any meta or thoughts they'd like to see from me? I've been hanging on the outskirts of some fandom discussions lately, so I'm in the mood, I think.

Anything relating to stories or fandom is fair game (though to warn you, I'm probably too insular to make community judgements, is the only thing). Anyone have something they want to see?

... Sci-fi noir, it does this to me, swear to Someone. And English class for compare/contrast, it's busted something in my brain. Oi.

[Sorry, by the by, for leaving people hanging. The last couple of days have been ... Um. Yes. My apologies, and I'll try get back around soon? I needed to do this first:]

... I keep trying to write this, and it keeps not working. *shrugs* It doesn't coalesce the whole way, doesn't quite ... It's too intrinsic, and therefore too tangled. But. Alright. Lets try this, and limit the aim to being only minimally confusing.

On the subject of pragmatism, and rationality in the face of ... well, everything, but specifically emotional situations.

... Okay. I'm just going to preface this with some information, so can you judge just how much I'm talking out of my arse. I have never been in a relationship (barring two weeks once when I was 18, which I found ... strange and bizarre, and mildly uncomfortable). I am fairly contently asexual, and have never noticably felt sexual attraction for ... well, anyone. I'm also an Aspie, and severely unsocial, to the point where most social situations (at least without a set purpose like a shared interest/activity) sort of baffle me.

I am also, for the record, in my mid-twenties, and perfectly content with all of the above, though it's taken me a lot of work to get to that point.

Now. I've been involved recently in a lot of conversations about relationships, and infidelity in particular (how, I'm not sure, why do people ask me these things, is it not obvious I'm sort of woefully unqualified to have an opinion?). Also, conversations about polyamory and open relationships, and just ... relationships involving multiple people, basically. People asking me what do I think of this, and how would I feel if that (usually devolving, once I've given my answer, to how the hell can you think that), and so on and so forth.

I do, in fact, have an opinion. Just the one, actually. Just from a general overview of all those conversations and scenarios and questions. The opinion follows thusly:

Why the fuck do people not TALK about these things, before getting into relationships (or at least in the early stages of one)?

Actually, why do people not talk in general? At least half the problems people posit in these conversations would have been, if not solved, at least revealed at a much earlier date, if it was socially acceptable to set boundaries before getting heavily involved in a relationship.

There's this one spot, when I'm walking towards town on a certain road. Where you come down off the hill at an angle, looking out over the river at the bulk of the town. At that point, purely because of a trick of the angle, a trick of perception, parts of the town appear to align/connect with other parts that they do not, in reality, actually connect with. The line of the ridge above the river valley seems to run about 30 degrees off from what it does in actuality, St Mary's Church seems to be directly connected by a road (to judge from the rooflines) up to the copper-roofed building at the top of the town (I've actually no idea what that building it, it's just very prominent on the hill, with the distinct green roof). In reality, there are actually two roads running crossways between them, and no direct links at all.

Which is random babbling on specifics, maybe. The point is. At this one point, coming into the town, every time I walk through, I get two distinct, specific images of the town. The one that appears just at this one spot, the diagonal-to-reality town, and the one in my memory, the actual town. Layered on top of each other, two maps overlaid on an image, creating a weird, half-way sensation.

There are other spots like that, in other towns. In the city where I went to college, there was this one spot, by the park, where you looked down the tree-lined road down into the city, and a trick of perception put the green domes of St Francis' (churches are wonderful landmarks, by the by) up against the bluffs on the other side of the river, which are in actuality around half a mile distant. In the evening, especially, it created the bizarre sensation that you were looking at a different, rather foreign city, something strangely mediterranean-looking. *smiles faintly*

They're just tricks of perception, those spots. Just angles, giving the illusion of something different lying superimposed over something familiar. Towns and cities layered across each other, one in memory, one in front of you, one in actuality, one in illusion. Just tricks, that's all they are.

But they give me ... a sensation, sometimes. Green-orange, heavy. I have to stand, sometimes, and just stare, just hold the feel of that other city/town in my head, hold the two images over each other, and feel the ... Potential? *nods* Feel the potential of them.

When I was younger, I used to hang upside-down over the garden wall, or off the top bar of the swing-set, and look out over the road. Seeing how oddly different it made it, grey-white and strange. Because the world doesn't look the same, upside-down, the directions don't seem to connect the way you think they should, and while you're hanging there, it looks like a different world. A strange and new place you haven't explored. A mirror-world, slightly off true.

It's the same with those places. Those odd junctures of angle and illusion that make familiar places look strange, those green-orange moments where it feels like the bridge onto another world, laid just an angle off this one. Where something so familiar to you that you don't even see it anymore is suddenly different, new, strange, exciting. Where you look, and look, and keep looking, because if you move, or look away, that other town, that other city, that other world, will disappear. Even if you know that all you have to do is stand in that place again, and you'll see it again. There are moments where it feels ... too strange and too fragile to let go of.

*smiles* If magic were real, if those other worlds were real worlds, then those places would be the places where you'd step over. The bridges, where you'd cross. And for some reason, because of that, the magic of translation/transportation is, in my head, a strange orange-green. *smiles faintly at self*

The world hides little tricks for you, little gems, tucked into random angles, little folds in itself. Tricks of perception. That's all. But 'all', I think, in this case, is ... still something special. Heh.

*shrugs* Forgive the slightly random digression, won't you? *smiles*

Prompted by grav_ity wondering if movieverse Loki was a raging misogynist (re: Natasha and Jane in particular). Just some musings.