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| 2025-04-11 19:46 |
| Friending Policy and Journal Management Miscellania |
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Welcome!
First things first: you don't have to friend me to get at the fic. All of the fic is available outside the lock. You can start with all the fic, or go by fandom -- primarily Fullmetal Alchemist, Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy XII, as well as several rarer fandoms. Fic is also tagged by character, pairing and other esoterica. All tags are here. (Coming soon: a master ficlist, and an actual archive website.)
So what's inside the friendslock? Music, writing meta, recipes, and occasional other stuff. I try not to talk about my life too much -- this is a fandom journal -- but pretty much anything that's not straight-up fic or fanmeta goes behind the lock.
I will friend back anyone who asks, or anyone who friends me, provided you're not my boss or my mother. (Sorry, Mom.) If you friend me (and you're welcome to do so at any point -- no need to ask permission), I'll add you back, but it can take a week or two for me to notice that my flist has changed -- for faster service, drop a note here. No explanation is necessary, but it's always nice to know how you found me.
Also, a note: I try to cover my Internet tracks pretty well, for a variety of reasons, mostly to do with not wanting my employer to find my potentially-copyright-infringing porn. ;) If you know, or figure out, who I am -- either my actual RL identity or an online handle I use that's more closely connected to my RL identity than this one -- please do me the courtesy of not outing me. Thank you!
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| 2008-11-30 20:11 |
| [writing neep] Assessment, Editing, Revision and Re-Vision |
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Post-NaNo, the stories stand like this:
where the gin is cold has around 30,000 words in it. It's unfinished; I'm going to guess it'll top out around more like 40,000. And it's broken. Not unfixably broken, but still -- ultimately -- broken.
The Original Thing is at about 20,000. It's very unfinished -- it'll be probably 90-110,000 when it's done, or thereabouts. It's not broken, or at least not yet.
So what do I mean by 'broken'?
( smudged, bruised, broken or salted earth )
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| 2008-11-25 19:20 |
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Quick note to say that I've been hit or miss about replying to comments lately, and I am very sorry. I've been sort of in a state of crazy writing that eats all my time and when I'm done writing I play FF6, still no Locke, emo, but that will be over when November is over, at least. And I will get back to everyone in the fullness of time.
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My first-ever FF6 fic. I usually don't say this, but, uh, please be kind? :D I'm still not totally comfortable with my grip on the settings or the characters, I just really wanted to write this. Bunches. Because I love these characters like burning.
(I'm also not done with the game -- I've just reacquired Cyan [and omg, weirdest place to put a mountan evar] -- so please no spoilers past that point, either. Thank you. ♥)
Strange Airs and Graces
It was -- well, he'd believed in magic since meeting Terra at least, but believing that someone else could do it was one thing, and this was entirely another.
Final Fantasy 6, Locke, Celes, pre-Celes/Locke. 1600 words.
PG-13/worksafe. Spoilers up to the first visit to Jidoor. Many, many thanks to my betas ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) lassarina and white_aster (IJ).
( It rained all the time in Zozo, or at least it felt that way, and even in full daylight it felt dark, unlit and unwelcoming. )
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The first of the pre-NaNo warmup pieces, which I finally had time to edit for posting!
It's in the same continuity as "see the bird with the leaf in her mouth", although I think it can be read on its own as well. It's not the sequel to "see the bird..." that I've mentioned -- that will be quite a bit longer and plottier, when it's done, and will center around the Great Array itself. This, rather, is sort of an Ed-POV interlude between the two, moderately fluffy and alchemy-ish.
Anyway, enough of that!
Least Complicated
"Emotions were messy and complicated and his impulse with all things messy and complicated was to skewer them like an insect on a pin and then examine them from all angles."
Fullmetal Alchemist animeverse, Ed/Roy, Al. 3150 words.
NC-17/MA/Not Worksafe for sex. Alchemy. Spoilers through the end of the anime (but relatively mild spoilers), same continuity as see the bird with the leaf in her mouth. Beta'ed by the wonderful pandoraculpa [LJ]; all remaining errors are my own.
( The problem with the library, Ed thought, was this... )
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mistful posts a fascinating and often screamingly funny post about women in fiction. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but huge swaths of it make me go "Yes. YES! THAT!" (Specifically: on the history of female characters in books; on books in which female-ness is viewed as a problem; on books that react to that by making the female character have basically no character besides "Look! She's better than the male character! WHAT A FEMINIST I AM."; on female characters that manage to be neither lame nor irritatingly perfect.)
But really, it was this quote that sold me:
And we all know that Susan turns away from Narnia in the end anyway, in a very specifically female way. (Well, I guess Edmund could have turned away from Narnia in the same way, but that would be an intrinsically hilarious scene.)
PETER THE MAGNIFICENT: My brother Edmund is no longer a friend to Narnia.
ASLAN: Oh that's a pity.
PETER THE MAGNIFICENT: All he thinks about parading around in nylons and lipstick!
ASLAN: ... Say what?
PETER THE MAGNIFICENT: DON'T ASK ME TO TALK ABOUT IT! So it's an interesting read. (Someday I will post about why I ping on female characters, why I like to write women, and why I like the female characters I do -- which is to say, both the asskicking Elena or Celes, the asskicking-but-also-supportive Tifa or Hawkeye or Cordelia Vorkosigan, and the not-physically-aggressive-but-deeply-coo l Lady Teldra or Alys Vorpatril. Because I love the male characters, but I love the female characters at least as much.) EDIT: Another quote that struck me, not because it's funny but because it's true of me: For another thing, sometimes going away from tradition leads to results that are pure awesomeness. For instance, seeing many versions of Little Miss Twit has made me so that when I see a Very Sensible female character, I am totally slain and I love her and I want everything to go right for her and I cheer at every scene. ...which is why Hawkeye won my heart in her first appearance, and why Susan sto Helit is one of my favorite Discworld characters (and also why I love Angua). Sensible! The world needs more sensible protagonists! Of both genders, actually -- but especially female ones, who often get pigeonholed into Women Are The Emotive Ones.
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| 2008-10-21 11:23 |
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Yuletide Fandom Nominations are open!
For those of you who aren't familiar, Yuletide is an obscure fandom holiday exchange. I've participated the last two years and loved every minute of it, writing for fandoms from Narnia to Discworld to Dragaera to Shakespeare to Elfquest -- you can see my submissions (both full-length assigned stories and shorter 'stocking stuffers') at this link. In fact, it's the only challenge I participate in anymore, but it'll take a crowbar to pry me away from it. ;)
Yuletide starts out with "Fandom Nomination," when you get a chance to list six fandoms you'd like to request stories in, and that's what's going on now. If you want to make sure your favorite small or obscure fandom makes the list, now's the time!
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| 2008-10-18 16:57 |
| [meme] Things I Like/Things I Don't |
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My Shift key is starting to intermittently stick. This is a nuisance, because I just replaced this keyboard. (Laptop keyboard, so the old standby trick of popping the key off to clean under it doesn't work.) Hopefully it will unstick again through use, else I will replace again. Either way, have patience with lowercasing of words that should be uppercased, if I miss fixing any.
From Chris Baty, but by way of mithrigil, ilyat and puella_nerdii:
"Before you sit down to write a novel, you make a list of everything you love to see in novels. When you write your own novel, you should put the stuff from your list in there. Then you should make a second list of everything you hate to see in novels. When you write your own novel, you should make sure none of the stuff from that second list creeps in when you’re tired."
For me, this piece of advice (which I ran into when I first read No Plot? No Problem!) is inextricably tied with rachelmanija's post from years ago about Writing by Cool Bits, in which she talks about how her writing is powered by her 'cool bits,' the things she thinks are cool or sexy or touching. And these can be anything from 'boys in glasses' to 'stories about the end of the world,' and they're inherently personal. Unlike some of the Things I Dislike about novels -- like, stories in which women are disposable and interchangeable prizes, which I think is actually wrong rather than simply not to my aesthetic -- Cool Bits are highly personal and tend to simply be about emotional reaction. What makes your heart beat faster? What makes you go, "Ooh!"?
See, a lot of my writing is powered by Cool Bits, and, as I told mithrigil, I think a lot of the reason for that is that I plug quite powerfully into archetypes. "Wolves" is on the list, and that's not to say that every story that has a wolf in it pushes my buttons. A bad story with a badly-handled wolf won't become a good story. But a wolf well-handled, a wolf in a story written well, is like a key: it plugs into Wolf in my brain and I come back with -- well, with nobility and loyalty, with blood and ice, with the moon, with the pack, with the lone wolf, the black wolf, the alpha and the omega, with pawbeats on the ground, with hunting, the smell of wet fur, golden eyes, grey eyes -- the noble wolf, the vicious wolf, the wolf at the door, the loyal packmate, the Hour of the Wolf, everything. And as I read, some of those meanings shear off and are inapplicable... but many of them stay. In that way, my connection to that archetype makes me an active collaborator in the story: everything I bring to it that isn't excluded by the text stays around, makes the whole of it richer.
It's hard to explain how that works, but, if the story works, it does, and the whole becomes so much more than the sum of its parts -- because the author invites me to participate in what she's doing.
So my list contains not just metatextual elements that I like, but also a (small sampling) of my Cool Bits. And the 'don't like' list has archetypes that I despise, too; it works both ways.
This is, by necessity, incomplete. I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot. But here we go.
( Things I Like )
( Things I Don't Like )
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| 2008-09-26 20:48 |
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I rarely talk about politics in this journal, because.... well, because I only have so much energy for important-slash-depressing topics, and I'd rather spend it on doing things rather than talking about doing things. But:
If you're a US citizen, and you're over the age of 18, you have a chance to make a difference. This is a vitally important election. And in most states, you still have time to register to vote, if you haven't already.
If you have strong opinions about the issues, if you care about what happens to us in the next four years.... register. And vote. No, really: it's important.
It really is.
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One-Eyed Fish, by Rider4Z/Otaku Lounge Productions
(Mushishi, to "Last of the Wilds" by Nightwish. Not really spoilery, as far as I can tell?)
AMV.org link: One-Eyed Fish (download)
YouTube link: One-Eyed Fish (streaming)
As before, downloading from animemusicvideo.org requires that you register there, but registration is free and the video quality is quite a lot better.
Shockingly gorgeous. I hadn't seen any of Mushishi when I saw this video -- and sill haven't, though the video prompted me to run out and buy the manga, and then the manga prompted me to put the anime on my Netflix. This is one of the most frankly beautiful videos I've ever seen, in a quiet, undramatic way that gets right under my skin. In my not-so-humble opinion, it functions as a work of art independent of the anime on which it's based, while still capturing the flavor of the anime/manga extremely well.
Also, the music -- it's worth it to watch the video just to hear "Last of the Wilds." (Which is not really much like any other Nightwish I've ever heard. I like Nightwish, but this is something else again, and something else remarkable.)
I watched the video and listened to the music often while writing my recent mythfic/litfic, and especially while writing "The Hawk on the High Air."
...And if the AMV interests you in the anime or manga, I can say that the manga is quiet and very beautiful, the stories are brief and episodic and each one wraps up satisfyingly all on its own, and the invented (I think) folklore is not only interesting but actually plausible as folklore. Recommended.
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Still Preoccupied With 1985, by Suberunker Studeosh
(Azumanga Daioh and others, to "1985" by Bowling for Soup. No significant spoilers. Well, it does briefly reference The Spoiler from FFVII, but if you have still not been spoiled for that ten years after the fact your spoiler avoidance mojo must be pretty good....)
AMV.org link: Still Preoccupied With 1985 (download)
YouTube link: Still Preoccupied With 1985 (streaming)
As before, downloading from animemusicvideo.org requires that you register there, but registration is free and the video quality is quite a lot better.
This is one of the genre of AMVs that tells an unrelated story using anime clips, so it's very watchable even if you haven't seen Azumanga Daioh. (Although it's part of the reason I watched Azumanga Daioh, an anime that won my heart by being about high school girls without focusing on their love lives at all. ♥ In fact, the only recurring male character is a teacher. The series is pretty much a Bechdel test paradise.) One of the reasons to watch it is that the storytelling is very good and very funny. The other, though, is the in-jokes, which show up mostly during the chorus. If you're reading my journal, I can pretty much guarantee that you'll get at least one of the in jokes. Sometimes it seems like I get more of them every time I watch it, and 'spot the reference' is a fun game.
If you have seen Azumanga Daioh, I can pretty much guarantee you'll love the way this video showcases Yukari. Oh, Yukari.
Suberunker makes great videos in general.
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| 2008-09-05 17:31 |
| Meme time! |
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Ganked from a bunch of places, but I think the first place I saw it was puella_nerdii:
Pick a character that I have written -- or maybe even a character you could see me writing, if I know her -- then 5 numbers between 1 and 100. Comment with the character name and the five numbers, and I'll answer the five corresponding questions from this list.
For very best results, a character I've written more than once, as I have better headcanon the more I write someone, but I'll give other characters a shot. I'll take the same character more than once as long as the numbers are different.
(If the character is such that the question you picked is irrelevant for some reason, like a question about childhood for a character who was never a child or something, I'll just have you pick another number.)
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Falling Dreams, by MysteriousRyder
(Kingdom Hearts, to "See Who I Am" by Within Temptation. Spoilers for both Kingdom Hearts games. Includes clips from the Kingdom Hearts 3 preview in the KH2 secret ending.)
AMV.org link: Falling Dreams (download)
YouTube link: Falling Dreams (streaming)
As before, downloading from animemusicvideo.org requires that you register there, but registration is free and the video quality is quite a lot better.
The thing about Kingdom Hearts videos is that... mostly they aren't very good. Some of them are funny, which is a different thing, but frankly there's just not that much material to work with -- just two FMVs per game, so if you want to avoid the game engine (which most people do, because of the burned-in subtitles) you've just not got that much. And there are only so many ways to remix those cllips. Most Kingdom Hearts AMVs basically look like they're rehashing the intro to Kingdom Hearts 2, except, since the intro to Kingdom Hearts 2 is gorgeous, they never do it as well.
...The whole point of this long intro is that this video is beautifully done, which is pretty impressive by itself, but particularly so because it is FMV-only and yet somehow, to me, doesn't just feel like a rehash. Even though Within Temptation is getting to be almost as overdone as Evanescence once was, this is actually a good use of it. The clips chosen match up well with the lyrics, the lyrics match up well with the characters, it's just really well-done. And beautiful. And makes me want to write Riku-fic for the first time in a long time.
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And the other one, this one for rymenhild. Thanks to both of you for bidding!
I have such great fondness for the Mabinogion, and especially for the stories of transformation, so...
The Hawk on the High Air
In the distance, a owl calls, and calls again, and then is silent.
The Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi. Gwydion, Llew Llaw Gyffes/Blodeuwedd, Gwydion/Gilfaethwy. 2300 words.
Probably worksafe, but implied incest and other -- well, mature themes, courtesy of the source material. Spoilers for the Mabinogion, specifically the Fourth Branch. Thanks to lassarina for the beta.
( He needed this song once, and crafted it once -- crafted it carefully, and used it carefully, and well. )
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Elvis vs. Anime, by Sierra Lorna/Premonition Studios
(Various anime characters, to "A Little Less Conversation" remix by Elvis Presley vs. JXL. No spoilers.)
AMV.org link: Elvis vs. Anime (download)
YouTube link: Elvis vs. Anime (streaming)
As before, downloading from animemusicvideo.org requires that you register there, but registration is free and the video quality is quite a lot better.
An old favorite of mine. A pleasure to watch, and always picks me up in a bad mood. I only have two more things to say:
1. This must've taken someone forever and a day in Photoshop.
2. I love this mix of this song.
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Another AMV from Anime Expo 2008 -- and another comedy.
Bustin', by Driftroot
(Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, to the Ghostbusters movie theme. Spoilers for Final Fantasy VII and Advent Children.)
AMV.org link: Bustin' (download)
YouTube link: Bustin' (streaming)
As before, downloading from animemusicvideo.org requires that you register there, but registration is free and the video quality is quite a lot better.
An FFVII: Advent Children video that's not action or overwrought angst. Who thought it was possible? This is another comedy video -- Staff Choice and Judges' Choice at AX2008 -- and is firmly in the genre of 'AMVs That Owe A Lot To Careful Photoshop Work," as well as "Animes That Reward Strategic Pausing To Get All The Jokes." (But watch it straight through the first time, and then go back to rewatch to get the jokes.)
It's great snarky humor, and it features Cloud, Tifa, Reno, Rude and the Remnants. What more is there to ask for?
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Another video! This one's one of my favorites -- a favorite anime, many of my favorite characters from that anime, to a song I like. How can I go too far wrong? It's a few years old, so you may've seen it already... but then again, perhaps not.
Life of a Dog, by Rider47/Otaku Lounge Productions
(Fullmetal Alchemist, to Green Day's "Holiday." No significant spoilers.)
AMV.org link: Life of a Dog (download)
YouTube link: Life of a Dog (streaming)
As before, downloading from animemusicvideo.org requires that you register there, but registration is free and the video quality is quite a lot better.
This one's a bit different -- action-y character profile, with occasional humorous moments. A lot of fun. I actually saw it the first time before I'd seen the series -- it works okay like that, though it's better if you've seen some of the series. I watched it again after I'd seen maybe the first quarter of the anime, and thought it was even better. Features many of my favorite characters, and frankly probably had some influence over what characters wound up being my favorites, too; it definitely has some influence over the way I write Ed, Al, Mustang, and Mustang's office. This may not be, objectively, one of the best videos out there, but it's one of my favorites hands down. Plus, great song choice.
There's a sequel AMV, which has a very different tone... but I'll get to that later.
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Status update: one charityfic at beta, one nearly ready for beta. Which means I may even get them both done by my Sept 1 deadline....
A while ago I posted that I might provide a link roundup to favorite AMVs (several from this year's Anime Expo, which had a good crop, and several older ones I love), and I got some good response to that. So I started to make my list. And it grew longer, and longer, and.... I realized that a) it'd be unweildy to post, and b) nobody was going to sit still and click through links to two hours or more of AMVs in one sitting.
So instead of swamping, I'm going to aim to post an AMV link every day or two until I run out. Easier for me, more manageable for you. Win for everyone!
For each AMV, I'll provide both a link to the video's page on www.animemusicvideos.org, and to a YouTube streaming of the video. The reason I'm giving both is that AMV.org requires that you sign up to download videos, and you may not want to commit to that if you're not sure you're interested. But if you do like the videos... well, registering at animemusicvideos.org is free, and the downloadable versions on the org are about a squillion times better quality than the YouTube ones, so I recommend going ahead and registering and downloading. Some of 'em are very pretty.
That said, the first video!
The Harassment of Kyon, by MysteriousRyder
(The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, to Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend." No significant spoilers.)
AMV.org link: The Harassment of Kyon (download)
YouTube link: The Harassment of Kyon (streaming)
This was this year's winner of both Comedy and Best In Show at Anime Expo, and I understand it also got best overall at Otakon. I can safely say that if you're a yaoi fan and have seen The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, it's very, very funny. A friend of mine also thought it was funny, despite the fact that he was not a yaoi fan and had only seen three episodes of Haruhi. I have no idea if it holds up if you haven't seen any of the series (possibly it doesn't), but -- well, it made me laugh without using an inherently joke song, it's witty as well as funny, it's reasonably well-edited, and it has a great concept. And almost, almost it makes me want to ship the pairing. ;)
(There are a lot of different reasons I might like an AMV. Some I like because they're beautiful, some because they tell a good story or capture the characters well, and some because... they make me laugh hard. This is definitely one of the latter.)
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accomplished
satisfied
chipper
pleased
amused
energetic