sundries

[rm]

I now have an AO3 account (where I am "arem" because they won't take two-letter names for accounts, but publishing my stories under "rm" as a pseud. It's sorta annoying) to upload my still not done yet Yuletide story to. I'm also going to upload my solo work there over the next couple of weeks so it has another home other than my badly tagged LJ. Co-written stuff obviously needs to be discussed, and probably needs a quick comma check. Mostly though, uploading IHNIIHBT or Descensus anywhere is a huge project.

Dear fucking god, Yuletide. On the plus side, it's finally achieved a tone and a mass I like. It's about 60% done, and I'm going to pop out in a bit to finish it. I think it's fun. I think it reads like a pack of neurotic puppies on E. I'm not joking.

Speaking of a pack of neurotic puppies on E... sanginmychains wrote The Dog When the Bell Rings which managed to make me both very nostalgic for Bad Things I Did in My 20s and very glad my life doesn't look like that anymore. Even when I was fucked up out of my mind, I was usually Ianto in that story, and I was a lot less gracious about it than him. And that's all I have to say about that.

Airplanes cannot sit on the tarmac for longer than three hours with passengers on board.

The Auschwitz sign was found cut into three pieces. I'm not actually feeling less creeped out by this. If you cut stuff open, stuff can get out. I dunno. It's hard to explain. I'm weirded out.

Brittany Murphy died of natural causes. The immediate assumption that it was drug-related (and that she or people who knew her therefore did not deserve sympathy) on the Internet was immediate and awful. This was then followed by "maybe she was anorexic." Sometimes people just die. And people of the tall, skinny sort are more likely to have undiagnosed heart conditions than most. And neither addiction nor eating disorders are a moral failing.

Yesterday I saw Young Victoria with marchek and co. It suffered, as biopics do from lacking narrative tension or even recognizing what it wanted to be the central conflict of the film (Victoria's struggle with her awful mother and her advisor/lover? Victoria's struggle to decide on a suitable spouse? Victoria's struggle to wield power once it was hers?).

On the other hand, the performances were very good, and the costumes were luscious and remarkably accurate. The film was also erotic, both in normal obvious ways and in ways that I tend to assume was just me (because hi, how many close-ups did we really need of various people winding or unwinding neck-scarves?). Unless you really care about weird historical geekery this is a rental, but we care!

Also I did not know, but after Albert's death, Victoria had his clothes laid out each day for the rest of her life; for a moment, I could not breathe. I am living in a strange country with this Bristol paper.

The big charity post is probably coming tomorrow night.

Comments

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Brittany Murphy's death is upsetting to me in ways I didn't expect.

It's crass to wonder about the cause of death with a value judgement. I do wonder, however, about drastic weight loss and arrhythmia.

People who say she "deserved" it in any way nauseate me.

[chickenfried-jo.livejournal.com]

I do wonder, however, about drastic weight loss and arrhythmia.

This is what I thought, too. Women in their middle years need protien or they loose too much heart muscle. It's a problem for vegans and vegetarians. But mostly vegans. Especially if you cut out soy which is really problematic for women over 30.

I just wonder if she lost too much heart muscle to live. Which is even sadder when you look at responses to her death mostly saying how big hearted she was. Not big hearted enough for her self.

[6-bleen-7.livejournal.com]

I don't think so—if her death was ruled a heart attack, it's much more likely that she threw a blood clot, which got lodged in her coronary arteries, or something similar. Insufficient heart muscle would not likely cause death with such an acute onset, but would rather present as congestive heart failure (her lungs filling up with fluid, for example).

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I am somewhat interested to know if food restriction/starvation was a contributory factor to Murphy's death, just because it's so widely encouraged/enforced in the US entertainment industry, especially for women performers. There are lots of doctors in Hollywood making a good living by telling women performers that a 500-calorie-a-day diet is perfectly healthy. If that nonsense played any part in her untimely death, it's a scandal as well as an individual tragedy.

That said, if that is the case, it's up to her family to choose whether or not to speak out on that, at their own discretion and on their own timetable. I've always admired Karen Carpenter's family, for example, for speaking out about her anorexia at a time when it wasn't widely discussed.