Me
S'up, my name's Rachel, I'm a twenty-twothree year old medical student. You may offer me your congratulations on having reached this, the highest pinnacle of nerditude. My defining characteristics are a disgusting love of pink (it's stealth ninja, okay - I have a theory. A long one) and a fear of falling down stairs. Don't run with scissors, guys. Otherwise, I write fanfic.

Tags include:
Bandom fic, Harry Potter fic (ETA: I don't write this any more! If you're friending hoping for updates, you're on to a losing streak), Prince of Tennis fic, House MD fic, Entourage fic, Sky High fic and Stargate Atlantis fic. There's even the odd original fic shoved in there somewhere.
For fic that's not actually posted on my journal, because I am the ultimate lazyass, try my del links.

Of late I've become heavily invested in bandom, because something ate my moral compass (I suspect Ray Toro's hair). Fair warning that most if not all my future entries will drag Ryan's scarves/Brendon's tattoos of fail/Spencer's hair/Geeway saving lives/Mikeyway is also into cats/Pete and necklaces made of honey/Joe winning at life into the equation somehow.

My policy from hereon in is friending anyone who comments on THIS HERE POST. While I read my entire flist most every day - look mom, no filters! - I am an indifferent commenter. I also fail at keeping up with who's friended me, despite multiple alerts. That's what happens when you read your email at one am after hours of refreshing assays into the fascinating world of microbiology. Comment here to be added! Or don't! I'm easy. I have pink tights.

The end.

P.S. Feel the need to vent/rant/critique all over my writing? Here's your chance! Anon is on.

Oh yeah, and I love those little lj v-gifts. YES, THIS IS A HINT.

Dear Mr Mack,
You were one of the best teachers I ever had. Breakfast at Tiffany's is one of my favourite songs because of you (even though it's probably the only song you can actually PLAY). It took me over a decade to read the book and I still haven't seen the film, but I love the song. I love it. And now I wrote a post-split Panic fic based on the lyrics because I needed to Fix Things. Aren't you proud?
Love,
Ex-Student Rachel

PS I really did. It's 3000 words and Brendon/Spencer!

Also, here is the song by the Deep Blue Somethings. It is sad but has a happy beat! Much like life right now.

( Breakfast at Tiffany's )

Ryan ROSS how could you leave SPENCER? DDDDDDDD: So much for the BFF forever! I HATE YOU JON WALKER. RYAN, WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO YOU?!

brb, crying unironically

Faro's Daughter, Georgette Heyer

I often feel that reading Heyer is much like eating a whole bag of marshmallows in one sitting. Afterwards, you don't feel full, but you do feel slightly sick, as well as extremely guilty. Especially when you're on a diet of hardcore literature. Sometimes, though? You just want a goddamn marshmallow.

( Not one of her better works. )

Previously, on Book Glomp 2009:
He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope |The Bostonians, Henry James | For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway | For Esme - with Love and Squalor, JD Salinger | The Outsider, Albert Camus | The Princess Diaries: Ten out of Ten, Meg Cabot | The Vicar of Bullhampton, Anthony Trollope | Molesworth, Geoffrey Willans | Villette, Charlotte Bronte | The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James | The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler | Cecilia, Fanny Burney | The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger | The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark | Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut | Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann | Siddhartha, Herman Hesse | The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga | The Duke and I, Julia Quinn | Brave New World, Aldous Huxley | North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell | Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee | Catch-22, Joseph Heller | Bright Shiny Morning, James Frey | Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck | The Demon's Lexicon, Sarah Rees Brennan | The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton | jPod, Douglas Coupland | 'Are these my basoomas I see before me?', Louise Rennison |

'Are these my basoomas I see before me?', Louise Rennison

Wow. Ten years. I got Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging when both Georgia and I were fourteen. At fourteen, I perfectly understood her desire to date an eighteen-year-old. By the time I was eighteen (and Georgia was still fourteen), I resented all those little girls stealing the decent guys my age. Now that I'm twenty-three and Georgia is fifteen, I find it majorly creepy that eighteen-year-olds would date fourteen-year-olds. Oh, perspective.

( The end of my childhood. )

Previously, on Book Glomp 2009:
He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope |The Bostonians, Henry James | For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway | For Esme - with Love and Squalor, JD Salinger | The Outsider, Albert Camus | The Princess Diaries: Ten out of Ten, Meg Cabot | The Vicar of Bullhampton, Anthony Trollope | Molesworth, Geoffrey Willans | Villette, Charlotte Bronte | The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James | The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler | Cecilia, Fanny Burney | The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger | The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark | Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut | Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann | Siddhartha, Herman Hesse | The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga | The Duke and I, Julia Quinn | Brave New World, Aldous Huxley | North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell | Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee | Catch-22, Joseph Heller | Bright Shiny Morning, James Frey | Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck | The Demon's Lexicon, Sarah Rees Brennan | The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton | jPod, Douglas Coupland

I started a new gym regime! I feel like I've been steamrollered by a drunken dinosaur, which means it's going well. However! I feel a need for musics - gym musics, not lovely melodic Gaslight Anthem-y stuff. That's for use as inspiration when writing doomed and tragic love stories, not sweating like a pig while on a cross-trainer. What I really need is music played in clubs - music I usually abhor but usually end up throwing myself around a dancefloor to in spite of myself (with much the same final result as seen post-gym binge).

So, people! Give me your Lady Gaga and Rhianna! Whatever you run/jump/climb trees to. In return I will write you a ficlet for the Panic pairing of your choice (or not, if your choice happens to be OH PLEASE GOD DON'T).

...

So I have terrible posture. The Hunchback of Notre Dame would come to me for tips. I've been considering some kind of brace, but the braces I pictured were a cross between a Roman crucifixion blueprint and what Frankenstein's monster would wear on a hot date. Basically, I wanted a stick that would strap my forehead, neck, shoulders and lower back into an upright position until the muscles learned to roll with it. Instead, I found things like this.

Now, I have no objection to trussing myself up in what looks like super-speshul bandages. I can put the trendy into mummification! But do they actually WORK? Does anyone have any experience and/or alternatives to offer?

jPod, Douglas Coupland

The first two books I read by Coupland were Eleanor Rigby and Hey, Nostradamus!. I developed a vastly inflated impression of his talent as a result.

( The short version? This sucked. )

Previously, on Book Glomp 2009:
He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope |The Bostonians, Henry James | For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway | For Esme - with Love and Squalor, JD Salinger | The Outsider, Albert Camus | The Princess Diaries: Ten out of Ten, Meg Cabot | The Vicar of Bullhampton, Anthony Trollope | Molesworth, Geoffrey Willans | Villette, Charlotte Bronte | The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James | The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler | Cecilia, Fanny Burney | The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger | The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark | Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut | Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann | Siddhartha, Herman Hesse | The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga | The Duke and I, Julia Quinn | Brave New World, Aldous Huxley | North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell | Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee | Catch-22, Joseph Heller | Bright Shiny Morning, James Frey | Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck | The Demon's Lexicon, Sarah Rees Brennan | The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton

I attended my first yoga class today. It was free! (I'm going to miss that aspect of being a student. The huge downside to having a paying job is, you know, paying for things.) It was equal parts 'Hmm' and 'OW' with a side of corny when she read us a relaxation mantra. But because the warning wank was on my mind, this part struck me particularly:

Breathe in compassion and you breathe out joy.

Hokey, non? But it got me thinking.

There are two aspects to the anti-warning stance that absolutely kill me. The first is that people are reading about other people's pain, other people's horrible experiences, other people's battles and are still all 'YEAH BUT I DON'T CARE.' PTSD is very real, you guys. (I got a 1H in psychiatry; I should know! No really. I should.) I'm not sure where triggering fits in the DSM-IV or the ICD-10, because we didn't study them in depth, but you can be certain it's there. Even if it had no name or international classification ... pain is pain.

In a year's time I, and 140 of my compatriots, will become qualified doctors. A lot of them during their psychiatry rotations expressed the view that mental illness is 'all in their heads.' This statement bothered me because of its UTTER STUPIDITY. Where is any illness except in your head? And why, because it has no physical manifestation, is it downgraded so? That's another day's debate, but the way the anti-warning people are dismissing triggering pain makes my blood boil. Everyone has a different pain threshold, mentally and physically. I stub my toe and it's like I'm being crucified; other people could have their toenails pulled and not wince. Pain is a spectrum, you fools, not a constant. No one has the right to decide what qualifies pain for anyone but themselves.

And then there's the part where they talk about 'just clicking out of the page if it bothers you.' Even leaving aside the fact that a triggered person actually cannot do this - speaking from the POV of someone without triggers, please tell me, HOW DO I FORGET ALL THE UPSETTING STUFF I'VE HAD OCCASION TO READ THROUGH THE YEARS? I may be able to click out of the page, but I can't X my memory. Also see: people are idiots.

The other thing that makes me frof at the mouf is the argument constantly trotted out by the anti-warningers - that warnings don't exist in popular media, books, TV and films. (Except for how they sort of DO.) As I was saying to Marks, this is our space. WE INVENTED IT. It's one of the few places where females are in the majority, where females hold all the positions of power, and you want to revert it to a patriarchical system? Wow, that's a ... valuable life choice, right there. xkcd said it best: We're adults now. WE GET TO DECIDE WHAT THAT MEANS.

It's interesting to note that quite a few of the most stringent anti-warningers mention how they themselves were abused. I wonder if their lack of compassion towards other victims/survivors is due to a lack of compassion shown to them. It's not an excuse, but it's maybe a reason.

Breathe in compassion and you breathe out joy. Breathe in disregard for the feelings of others and what you breathe out pollutes everyone around you.

I'm sure some people are muttering into their hands about the lack of compassion I showed during a certain religious debacle. Hands up, I'm guilty. My sense of compassion has a huge blind spot when it comes to religion. It may take me my whole life to conquer that, but all I can say is that I'm trying.

Now is the time to tell me if anything of mine needs warning. I know I bumped off Harry a few times...