i dreamed about ffviii. which i've never done before.

The dream was the early storyline, as if i was playing it or watching it, and can remember thinking how much darker it was then anyone seemed to realise.

It opened on a train, on Squall sitting there with his gunblade across his knees and his eyes distant. He was ostensibly one of the 'good guys' - in this, SeeD were 'good' rather than grey-area - but somehow he had been bonded to the sorceress since birth and had been performing assassinations for her in between his SeeD duties. He'd be sent to one city by SeeD and work there, and then the order would come in to kill someone in the city, or even his commander, and he'd have to make it look like they were casualties of war. But his total of hits was going down, and he couldn't explain why, and the Sorceress, whichever one she was, was pissed off, her voice railing in his head more painful to him than his body language was letting on.

And there were a couple - maybe Cid and Edea? maybe Laguna or Caraway and Julia? - who had a child, a daughter (if Cid and Edea a greanddaughter whose mother had died). And they, too, were somehow bonded to the Sorceress for protection: and when the wife died or disappeared the husband increased his bond in order to protect the little girl, who was all he had left in the world. There were all kinds of charms he could perform, which increased the Sorceress' power and which She claimed would also save the girl from suffering. But because the girl's parents had been servants of the Sorceress and bonded to her, the lure of the Sorceress was already eating away within her. I've forgotten which ffviii girl she was.

And what was going to happen was that Squall, the Sorceress' assassin, would screw up /another/ job, related to this girl - the protection wards on the girl would prevent him from killing someone in her close vicinity or something. He'd realise that he could no longer continue the double life, and sever his ties with both SeeD and the Sorceress, in as much as he could. But the call of the Sorceress would still be in him, so he would have to fight against his unconscious mind in order to go with his conscious. I think most people were due to die.

But at this point - where the 'canon' or the game was abandoned and this became like reading a fic - Squall was thinking about Seifer. I guess Seifer was also bonded to the Sorceress, but he was no SeeD and not an assassin like Squall: he couldn't function in half-truths like that and was her Knight. There are certain things which catch your eye and hold it as you enter a room: for Squall that was Seifer, glorious in his power. Previous to where the 'game' starts, Squall would have taken the same train to visit Seifer for the few days between rival assignments. They were, of course, doomed to failure.

Squall's change of allegiance goes against his Sorceress-bond, goes against his training, goes against everything bred into him: he can't expect Seifer to understand, let alone chainge /his/ allegiance too, and doesn't even ask. And when Squall turns traitor Seifer becomes bitter and cruel, thinking that Squall's bond to the sorceress must have been faulty, that first Squall transferred the love due the Sorceress to Seifer and then lost it entirely, and it was never 'real'. There is, of course, no way that Squall can drop by to tell Seifer that no, it /was/ real, the most real thing in his fake fake life and he's still in love, never stopped being. Seifer, going insane as the Sorceress bond warps and without Squall as his lover, becomes paranoid and doubles his guard again and again until no-one can reach him but the Sorceress, and she becomes louder every minute.

This is what happens when you both re-read 'and the zax came back, the very next day' and think Saisuko thoughts before sleep. I /like/ that story.

In answer to Rose's question, I decided i'd /really/ love to have 'tease' on a t-shirt/coffee mug/whatever. And then i took a second to consider nudity, even partial, on coffee mugs. And went off and found 'wind and rage' instead. Because i'm all about Rose's ffviii art. ^_^

It's a genius idea, which i 'plaud and think would be great. Although, mind you, i still haven't got the mancer cafepress stuff i still want. But i /will/, honest. And soon as i'm solvent enough.

But, but, all this caused me to remember from way back when before i even had an LJ account, when I'm sure i caught a bit of conversation about the possibility of cafepress bishink shirts. I'm sure they were an idea.

*flicks thru tenshi's and rose's calendars of entries* yep, here and here. So, what happened to that idea, huh? I bet you thought you could just ignore it and everyone would forget all about it, but no... ^_^

Oh, and while i'm stuffing a small entry with as many links as possible, the combination of trying to write a fic recs page, re-reading the shinra, ink continuity, the return of angie's sins to the world of the currently-being-written and this have all conspired to make me madly in love with rufus. Especially evil!manipulative!rufus.

Ehhh, i should be watching utena, writing fic or tidying. Not surfing journals. Bad harpy. No biscuit.

I'm sorry, i'm having a "dudes" moment. Please bear with me.

Dudes, i've become horrifically slashophiliac. In a bad, bad, way too much way. I mean, I started slashing the characters in Gatsby about halfway through. Yes, I finally read it, between 4:30 and 7:30am on thursday last week. And yes, i realise that i read freakishy fast, when i /do/ read, and i probably missed half the meaning of the book, but since i'm going to be studying the damn thing i think i'm allowed to.

And i started thinking about how very slashy the video to the Monkees' "Daydream Believer" was earlier today. And then started wondering about the possibility of finding some SeaQuest DSV slash. Mmm, SeaQuest. Hadn't watched /that/ in ages. Forgot how very damn much i both love and want to be Jonathan Brandis. But possibly not at the same time, because that would be, like, twisted. Like the twisted and vaguely beautiful chris/chris timeshift fic i just found, which i'm madly in love with.

Which made me think about pairings, and instincts with pairings. Like... in Gundam Wing, I can't imagine any pairing involving Quatre other than 3x4, just because it's basically canon. But I also gravitate toward 1x2, because... I just do, and i realise that leaves poor Wufei out in the cold but the world in which everyone is gay does not exist, sad though this may seem. There's got to be a token straight gundam pilot, and if you're completely heterophobic you can always shove Treize at him. Which doesn't quite appeal to me, somehow.

Now, with ffviii i'm very much about the Saisuko, especially with Seif on the brain as he is. Although Saifuu is pretty also, and my first inklings of ffviii fic were actually squall/zell, which shocked me vaguely. But still: i don't like 'queifer' *teeth grate at use of embarrassing squashing-together-of-names terminology*, at all, it doesn't make sense to me. I don't /understand/ Squall/Rinoa, much as i'd love to. I can't quite get Squall/Laguna either, though it pains me to admit it, just because i don't understand how they're compatible: my Squall, the Squall which lives in my head, wouldn't suit Laguna. Although they /do/ look good together. The only femslash pair i can imagine there is Quisty/Xu, and i imagine them loudly.

And in *nsync slash, i really, /really/ like Lance/JC. What with them being my favourites and all. But lamblove throws me off, because, well, Justin doesn't /deserve/ Lance. Because i appear to be the only person who cannot yet manage to like the Infant, though i try, i really do. However, i can deal with Justin when he's paired with Chris, and the age gap doesn't get to me at all.

But age gaps get to me in other fandoms. As with Wufei and Treize, where i've never seen Treize come off as anything but a letch taking advantage of Wu's misplaced sense of honour. And the whole padawan thing does absolutely nothing for me, sad to say, which means i'm gonna have hell with FFX if i refuse to read the Auron/Tidus on those grounds. Maybe it'll have believable het, instead. Or, if Yuma's at all interesting, Lulu could get some femslashy dealing with...

Anyway, dislike of certain agegaps: not so much the ages, as the social relationship. I don't like the man-in-position-of-trust-and-responsibility topping youth-who-is-student structure. So the classical Platonic model of love, which is old man/young boy, not sexless like Aristotle and Aquinas tried to make you think it was, is fine so long as the boy isn't a dependant. When it starts to take on nasty undertones for me, /even/ if it's reciprocal love and the youth is of the age of reason and all that.

Thus Buffy. Where i see Oz as supremely slashable, but can't tell who with, because i'm instinctually against Oz/Xander on the grounds of considering Xander het, and Oz/Giles just... doesn't work in my mind. I found an Angel/BtVS crossover with Oz/Lindsay, once, and that was pretty. Can't for the life of me remember who wrote it, but... *prrr*. Anyway, it was because of this that i was amazed, overjoyed and stuff like that to find Oz/Devon here, the work of Sheila. Who is damn cool, since she knows "Flagpole Sitta" by Harvey Danger (and i was beginning to think that i was the only person who remembered 1997), and likes PJ Harvey and Radiohead and!*nsync! and write Buffy and Angel slash and... yeah. oh, and she reads Isabeau's journal, which proves conclusively that the world is circular and shit and reminds me that i haven't added her to my friends list yet, even though i tend to trawl her journal for fics.

Now all i need to find is SeaQuest slash for the Photon Bullet episode with Lucas Walmcheck and Seth Green's character getting it on, and without mention of cybersex too, and i will be ecstatically happy.

Can you tell i just watched telly for the first time in about a month? Mmm, popular culture, how i have missed you.

Oh, and the overt slashiness can be entirely blamed on the fact that i'm making a fic recs page, and trying desperately to find the fics i loved and lost a long long time ago and cannot again find. Which, of course, involves reading a lot of fics in a myriad of fandoms, which confuses my poor brain and turns everything slashy. Oh, and i've been reorganising my bookshelves, which means picking up random Viragos and reading them, and they just happen to be Radclyffe Hall's The Well Of Loneliness and Mary Rebault's The Friendly Young Ladies, again, and Olivia by Olivia, for the first time.