beloved, gaze in thine own heart

I think some of the children's books I've read have the most gorgeous illustrations. As a wee bookworm, I was obsessed with fairy tales, then got into mythology when I was nine, and in addition to molding me into the anthro geek I became, some of the pictures completely blew me away.



If you're also a fairy-tale geek or just want to see some breathtaking illustrations, I highly recommend taking a look over here. My favorites are the ones for the Snow Queen.

And hey, since I'm working from home and there's snow on the ground and it's really kind of a cozy day...feel free to spill your own geekery in the comments. I love finding out what sort of stories have stuck with other people from their childhoods. =)

according to my research...

I love my friends:

Me: Hey, you want to go to a Christmas party?
Xanthe: Those are...scary words.
Me: What if I told you it's a BDSM Christmas party?
Xanthe: Oh, I'm there.

Some of you might have noticed I like to write kinky stuff. My research in that area has been strictly freelance and I've never downloaded porn in my life, but the other night I went to a meeting. I know fangirls are supposed to stay hunched over their computers day and night, but there's only so much you can learn off the 'net.

It was pretty cool. I was the youngest one there--lots of gray hair at the table--and when I walked into the room it looked like a board meeting was going on. This is before I found out the two ladies to my right were slaves, the woman running the meeting was a cock-and-ball torture maven, etc. And never, ever have I been at a meeting where you end up going around the table and saying whether you identify as a top, switch, or bottom, if anything.

But dude, it was so cool. The organization just had its twentieth anniversary, for which they turned the basement of the Hyatt on Capitol Hill into a dungeon. Don't know if I would've been brave enough to step into that, but next week there's a sociological lecture on the evolution of the kink community, which sounds very nifty.

Afterward, the guy sitting next to me asked me out for coffee, but it was getting late and I wanted to digest things, so we just ended up talking about House while we walked to my car. Turns out he's a comic geek and a Hugh Laurie devotee, so we blabbered about fandom for a bit.

I have another friend writing her thesis on S&M; maybe I'll see what she's up to. Or La Actriz might come, with a little persuasion.

Ficlet

Tra-la-la; this is a ficlet I may or may not name or cross-post or do anything with. A little bit of Chase angst, a little bit of Chase/Cameron fluff, and gratuitous mentions of glitter paint. Totes kid-friendly. I’ve never actually written straight-up Chase/Cameron anything, but this was fun.

Prompted by enigma731, who was feeling fluffy. Hope you’re feeling better!

( He came over and she was gift-wrapping, unwittingly doing a fair impression of a Hallmark commercial. )