petronia

TIME TO BLOG, WHAT IS THIS EVEN

1) For Yuletide, I received Another Man's Son, which is a what-if story about how Dio met Giorno (it is awesome and chilling and involves Arrrt). YES, LADIES AND GERMS, I HAVE CAUSED MORE JOJO FIC TO EXIST. I really did, because I nominated the fandom. And the writer had some small part in it, naturally. XDD You should all go read and comment, because it is v. good indeed.

2) Feel free to guess my Yuletide story! For, uh, credit? XD A prize yet to be determined? (This applies to anyone who was not at my IRL housewarming party and remarked on my whiteboard scribbles.) I will make the game super-duper-easy: I've talked about the fandom, the post's not fallen off my DW page yet, and the story itself is an Obvious Sabina Story(tm). It was completely written and edited in 36 hours - that also covered two decent nights of sleep, a four-hour work meeting, and several loads of laundry. Yeah, I have no idea.

3) PENGUINSPOILERS ARE NUCLEAR, I am three eps behind and downloading as we speak. Will comment after I'm done, no doubt, unless of course I just flail and repost fanart on Tumblr as I've been doing all along.

Ikuhara could piss me off at the finale (and it won't be beating Utena, anyhow), but I have to say I enjoyed the process of watching an anime week-by-week, actually looking forward to the next episode, and not getting bored halfway and stopping. I think the last time that happened was Monster, literally. Since then, if I've managed to watch an anime TV series entire, it's because I marathoned it (or large stretches of it).

4) A white Christmas! I had grown resigned to us having stolen London's December, so this is extra gratifying (despite having to drive in terrible conditions today).

( Cut for random updates on the state of Sabina in December )

UPLOADED. Er, still needs editing. XD; But uploaded, and - for a certain definition - complete. New personal record for number of words written in one 24-hour period!! (Unless the last half of Proof by Contradiction broke that, but I suspect not.) I think I will take myself off to Laika in celebration.

The reveal of this one will be interesting, because by a certain point (a week ago?) I knew I could do it, and didn't actually panic at all. One of those all-too-rare lightning-in-a-bottle experiences.

...And now for Christmas card treats. XD The batch sans prompts has been sent out already, though I'd be lucky if anyone gets one before Advent.

HOW ARE YOU GUYS DOIN'.

1) The Writing: So I may have signed up for Nano, for the first time since 2003. AhahahahaHA. I will also be nominating for Yuletide as soon as those are up, despite the fact that the new system shows every sign of being crankier than the old system, and at this rate the story itself will need to be written in like three weeks. What the heck do I call Ono Natsume/basso's Italy-verse? It doesn't have a canonical anything on AO3. I don't think it has fic at all, anywhere.

2) The Hair: I have a new hairstyle, as a result of neglecting the old hairstyle until it got incredibly long and straggly, then going to a salon that botched the cut, then fleeing in dudgeon to another salon that fixed the cut for the sort of $$$ I would associate with deductibles for elective surgery. Which, in a way, this was. (Due to massive repeated childhood/adolescence home haircut trauma, I am more terrified by haircuts than by dental work. In fact, a bad haircut is the only thing that will give me a panic attack, whereas I've been known to doze off in the dentist chair if no one is actively causing me pain.)

The hair is now shoulder length and VERY CURLY, which causes it to be VERY VOLUMINOUS. Think Chara circa 1992. The stylists kept talking about J.Lo, which I think demonstrates that gays with refined taste in R&B have LONG memories, because J.Lo hasn't had curly hair since like the mid-90s.

3) The PSA: There is an arrrt gallery on Saint-Denis (under the Planete BD, next to a few funky furniture stores) that sells original penciled/inked comic/BD pages. It's pretty much all it sells, in fact, other than some toys and comic-style illustrations - flipbooks full of them, like poster art. A signed original colour insert by Dany runs in the $3000 range; a random inked page out of a random issue of Young Justice or Iron Man runs in the $200 range. Is that normal? Like... is this really what happens to the original art after the comics get printed, Marvel/DC/the Franco-Belgian publishers sell it off in bulk to the art gallery circuit? XD;

4) The Blog: Alas, I am using Tumblr more these days. But I would encourage you guys to remember that the main Tumblr is "minimoonstar", and the fan Tumblr is "genufa", and that the petronia Twitter is not active, sorry, I can only update one Twitter from my phone and I need that shiz for work.

5) The Movies: Hara-Kiri, Drive, Take Shelter. I also basically wrote out my post on Melancholia but it was eaten by Via Rail's wifi. Short version: I will punch Lars Von Trier in the face, though the contents of the film are excellent and I would recommend it to anyone who was able to play through the first Kingdom Hearts without barfing, and does not find portrayals of depression too triggery. Also, Tomboy. Don't let me forget that one.

6) The Upcoming Content: I may be doing a bit of volunteering for OTW. IDK, I was contacted and it occurred to me that while I don't have the patience or the bandwidth or the skill set to make the sort of contribution I see from others (and is also why I never volunteer for online fandom projects, in general), I could... do the stuff I do at my day job? Basically. So we'll see how that discussion pans out.

What I really did put myself in the queue for is One Week One Band, upcoming, in January. Basically I am waffling between Charlotte Gainsbourg and Mylène Farmer, but I have two months to decide. (Jane Birkin would be in the running, but writing about Jane basically implies writing about ALL THE GAINSBOURGS. Which may or may not be a good thing, in terms of scoping the project. I want this to be lightweight; I have a horrible feeling I could barf out a 33 1/3 on eg. the Libertines if I weren't careful. XD;)

Midway through Beirut's set at Osheaga on Sunday. You know how when inspiration strikes really hard your brain goes into this weird whiteout mode and you later realize you have no idea what the other person's been saying to you for the last five minutes? I lost a good 10 minutes of that set, which annoys me because it's not like I get to see Beirut play every other week. It's not the sort of idea I'd normally ever write out, either, but now I feel like I have to, just to have something to show for my distraction. XD;

Anyway. It turns out that Beirut has a new album out (on MP3 - it leaked early, so the digital version went out early while the physical formats ship for an August 30 release date). Because I am a nonpareil of deduction I figured this out when they started playing songs I didn't know. I've just gone and pre-ordered the LP for a chance at the special ed., since I have a ridiculous textbook-case mania for clear vinyl. Beirut makes good vinyl-listening albums so the risk isn't great: I nearly always put The Flying Club Cup on from beginning to end. I've gradually come to realize that that album is a bona fide decade top 20. It's weird because no individual song on it is as good as "Elephant Gun" or "Postcards to Italy" or "Gulag Orkestar" (except arguably "Cliquot"), but it's perfectly sequenced and does what it does so well. I remember when it first came out, someone wrote a review which identified the perfect use case: the evening after moving into a new place, unpacking boxes while unwinding with a glass of wine. Packing a suitcase before next morning's flight, too, it works for that. As long as I continue to travel for pleasure, this album will never fully leave the rotation.

My ranking of Beirut releases, based on how often I listen to them:

The Flying Club Cup
Realpeople Holland (particularly "Venice", because I can't get over that it actually sounds like Venice)
Lon Gisland EP
The Gulag Orkestar (a good album, but I only ever replay three songs on it)
March of the Zapotec (I barely listen to this one at all)

So clearly I approve that Zach Condon chose to return to indiepop roots on The Rip Tide, instead of making a vuvuzuela-gamelan fusion record or something which was the only other career route this could have taken. It can't ever be disgustingly twee, anyway, what with the brass instrumentation and dude's vocal style, although "East Harlem" makes a concerted effort. I don't know how much I'll end up listening to it yet, but I imagine as much as Lon Gisland EP surely.

IMO this is the best of the new songs (dodgy Soundcloud upload, listen before it's gone):

The Rip Tide - Beirut by DJmich

3 – For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to write?

This meme is designed for ppl who do more than write one story per canon before moving on, isn't it? ...I'll limit this to fandoms where I've actually produced more than a couple of pieces.

( My inability to stay on topic for more than two sentences, let me show you it )

I'm getting tired, so signing off. XD; Drabble requests still open here! I am writing the fills, believe it or not.

From

fahye:

Pick a character I write, and I will give you the top five ideas/concepts/other I keep in mind while writing that character that I believe are essential to depicting them accurately. This includes both original characters and characters about whom I write fanfic.

Actually, you can extend that to any character I've read a lot of fic about... not that you'd know necessarily, of course. XD My voracious and not-particular-picky fic consumption is (among other things) a way of honing my own ideas of characterization against Fandom, like window shopping or a card-sorting exercise. Right, right, wrong, right, hmm, wrong, poor taste, right. Reading is what creates the model. Writing only introduces quirks.

Or, pick up the meme so I can ask you.

Or-or, I was taking Ask Me Anything questions on my Tumblr the other day - click link, ask me a question?

Title: Lyonnesse
Fandom: The Bigend Trilogy, by William Gibson
Characters: The Curfew (proportionately to canon)
Spoilers: character stuff through the end of Zero History, but peripheral to the plot of the books
Rating: PG13 for Heidi's language
Wordcount: 3183 words

So yes, I wrote a story about the fake reunion of a fake indie band while faking William Gibson's style. XD; This got a great comment-to-hit ratio for AO3, though the fandom's a minority interest even for Yuletide.

( the fuckyeahthecurfew Tumblr reblogging Pitchfork Reviews Reviews' review of Pitchfork's review of The Curfew reissue )

This was interesting as a writing exercise for two reasons: the characters turned out to be indivisible from Gibson's prose style, and I had to dial back my own process to get it right. Gibson is a lazier writer than I am!

And that therefore there is no such thing as "too dumb to post" LOL

...Also I need more expressive icons.

The difficulty with writing in BBC!Sherlock, I think,** is that everything I have potentially in common with this dude is terrible. (Other than the neutral stuff, vis: I'm intelligent, I work as a consultant, I use a Blackberry. I acquired the latter two pretty much the same week I acquired the fandom, which is not even the creepy part.) It's hard to get rid of traits one picks up, or that get magnified - echoed - etched in - by writing characters. There was a recent interview with Johnny Depp in which he talked about how they were all of them inside somewhere, shoved in boxes, there to remain: Edward Scissorhands, Jack Sparrow. Donnie Brasco. Sweeney Todd. And that this was probably not an excellent thing, psychologically, cumulatively. Oh good, not just me, I thought. It's usually just the one or two quirks, but they're not temporary put-ons. I wasn't able to eat spicy foods before writing Fuji Shuusuke.

Temperamentally I'm much more Mycroft anyhow. The fanon Mycroft is an unheimlich cross between M, Beezus Quimby, and the Duchess Tremontaine++ (but don't be silly, Sabina, I hear you say: Mark Gatiss is always the Duchess). I am willing to cut him some slack, though, as my lovely 7-years-younger, much-more-musical, rather-less-suited-for-office-work sibling lives across town in a ~~slightly dodgy~~ bohemian apartment with her BFF, the blonde boykiller army cadet, and believe you me I hear much more about this from my mother than I would like. While the preceding is definitely "the creepy part", I can promise objectively that I am not at all inclined to be creepy about it, which makes me think that Sherlock must have had it coming wrt Mycroft's meddling, at least in the past. That makes sense, no? I mean, most people would need to do cocaine quite heavily just to attain dude's baseline for terrible decision-making, so imagine. The classic INT-WIS minmax strikes again.

** Other than how it's really not what I ought to be doing right now. And I'm not! Actually! ...I'm procrastinating by blogging.

++ I was aware, as one is, that Conan Doyle had been one of the inputs to the atmosphere of Riverside, but I wouldn't have extended that to the characters. And yet, the nudge turns out to be a small one, doesn't it? Weird. After deep cogitation I've determined this is because Alec and Richard never solve violent crimes, they just commit them.

AND IN CONCLUSION, BEES.

I paid for my Dreamwidth account today! I finally feel like I'll be using it enough in future, if not continually, to justify - not the expense, but the citizenship application in a certain sense. A symbolic gesture. XD

I really need to finish something for Kink Bingo amnesty. Hence this, which is a collation of paragraphs scattered among old 750words entries, in search of a point. XD; There's the Owen Pallett one, too. I wrote out a 500-word summary of the thing, realized it would be 5,000 words AT LEAST, and ran weeping in terror. I am a wimp, you guys. Maybe I should keep thinking of it as a particularly lengthy album review.

Title: C3I [provisory, depending on how many fics this turns out to be]
Fandom: Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex
Pairing: Motoko/OFC [minor canon FC, actually]
Wordcount: about 1000 words?
Rating: R-ish
Notes: for , "Sensation play" square

( This... cuts off right before the sex proper ahahaha. Not because of that precisely, but because I realized I had no other reason to write it - IOW it needs a plot, a conflict, something, rather than an extrapolated technology use case. A hack, dammit, A HEIST. )

Help me dear internets: what pairings do I write. Seriously. Just... name stuff. *flaps hands*

Doctor Who S05E07 "Amy's Choice": ( ngl I'd been dragging my feet. Will save you the suspense though, it was good. XD )

Doctor Who S05E08 "The Hungry Hungry Hippo Earth": ( the real question is, what happens when the TARDIS materializes on a North Korean submarine. )

( Footnote 1: l'enfer, c'est les autres )

[2]: Speaking of Hell being a series of rooms and passages: TARDIS/Yume Nikki fusion. Think about it.

I know myself enough to realize that there is something bubbling away on the back brain burner at this point, that will coalesce from the primeval broth of my preoccupations in eight months or whenever I find the hook (and here one pictures a metal fish hook lowered into a supersaturated solution of salts). ( Some of the stuff I'm preoccupied with. )

Anyhoo. No way this is going anywhere until I find out what else ~~the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy~~ Moffat has to say on the topic of weeping angels. And possibly retrace the entirety of the Knife's research for their opera ahaha of course I could just write an album review instead of an album review disguised as a Doctor Who fanfic but where is the fun in that my friends, where is the fun in that. Although as much as anything I just want any excuse to borrow the libretto, which I find... intensely moving? Like it gets to what touches the soul/heart about SCIENCE by not foisting meaning on one at all, just presenting the act of observation (and cataloguing, and cogitation) for what it is. I keep coming across reviews that are like "asd;jklsd this is SO CHALLENGING" and it's like... really? There are 3-4 songs that are yr typical The Knife/Fever Ray and okay, the rest is recitative over techno noises rather than eg. a harpsichord, and lovely experimental ambient stuff that probably accompanied video projections and contemporary dance numbers onstage, and that one can safely zone out to without feeling like one has failed as a listener (or the creators qua creator) because one can't locate the pop oomph. Like, maybe you're challenging yourself to hear something that's not meant to be there? So says the person who has never managed to get into Gas.

( Other ppl's fic, comedic value, gaps in the record )

Anyway I have been fiddling with a longstanding original fiction project that I have now given a firm deadline, but anything relating to that will be on carnet where it belongs.

Now I can exclusively reveal that...

canis_m was right, obviously. XD

Traffic, parts V-VII [Viewfinder]
Finally.

Speak, Mirror [Black Lagoon: Yuletide gift for

escalove]
I offered this because I could cheap-ass my way through it; so cheap-ass, in fact, that I wrote what amounts to a mock!canon episode. The recipient, too, was asking for stuff like evocative setting descriptions ahahaha in retrospect I'm not sure why I didn't write Malacca but call it Roanapur since it made no sense for anything to happen in Malaysia. It was meant to be Revy/Eda but the structure didn't allow for nun muffdiving. When I look at it I can see the phrasing I borrowed from Bester and Bradbury, like swiping someone else's coat for a corner store run when you can't be bothered to dig in the closet for your own.

So that's 11000 words of finished project, plus 1500-2000 words of abortive origfic fragments (mostly SSBB attempts XD). Here is one I'm likely to pursue:

( Werner moved into the new studios in March )

Conclusion: a reasonable tally, for me, and when one considers that for two years I wasn't able to write at all. No wonder, too, because it's the same energy I used to get through b-school, only turned completely inward. Writing fiction for three hours takes the same effort as sitting a three-hour exam, judging from the level of hunger it induces. ^_^; Writing for three hours every two days for two weeks is therefore as strenuous as finals period. B-school taught me to turn the tap on at will (I never thought it would help with writing, of all things), but I can't point the hose in two directions at once.

Resolution: I had a wordcount resolution for '09 and frankly forgot about it. XD; I'm reasonably certain I made it, though, if blogging counts. In early 2010 I want to finish that one Tenipuri story, and the one originally started for the SSBB fashion/dressup issue. After that... we'll see.

Wore a geeky costume for Halloween. I did do the Star Trek costume, and it was great: moves well, neither too warm nor too cool for late October, no danger of wardrobe malfunction ~~because I am not Captain Kirk~~, and everyone knows what it is. Strangers kept giving me the Vulcan salute. ( Halloweek social calendar recap )

Did community radio. Basically I signed up to replace Ced when he took off to HK, although not strictly in his time slot as I speak Mandarin, and also have no idea what i'm doing. Thursday night was meant to be another "training session" but rapidly turned into "err half the volunteers haven't shown up, do you feel up to blithering about the Coco Chanel movie on air for a few minutes" orz. The other girls are cool, though, and I have been made arts correspondent because I am obviously "hip" and "plugged into the local scene" (community radio is supposed to play local indie music as a matter of policy; I gather Ced was handling this part as well). Chinese ppl being Chinese ppl the Local Attractions segment also includes restaurant reviews i.e. we have instituted a weekly foodie group, CANNOT LOSE. The technical aspect of the thing is fun too, for whatever reason I feel like I'm really taking to it despite being A/V equipment-onchi normally.

(I think I have mentioned this but ppl have told me I ought to do radio/presenting all my life. Finally after ELLEN FREAKING KUSHNER said this I was like, fuck, OK, I have got to try it. orz So that is 102.3FM Radio Centre-Ville, TTH 10:30PM, if you're in town.***)

Signed up for Yuletide. Are we allowed to post a final list of what we're offering? Or is that not kosher? I ask because I would like to spread the lulz around, but probably I'll take it to carnet (if I get someone I know there I would be astonished). XD; I was insanely picky about my offers and the Novikware probably hates me at this point but at least I'm confident of delivering the goods. Note that it took me about four years to come to terms enough with the idea of an anonymous pan-fandom exchange even to READ THE STORIES, and then during b-school forget it, of course.

NaSomethingWriMo proceeds apace, but more on that later.

EDIT -- Made Skittles vodka. Forgot about this one ahahaha. I first heard about this on the Peter Doherty fan forum lol it is all the rage. Great time of year for it of course (deals on bulk candy). However dude on Instructable was right, the red flavour is liable to taste like cough syrup particularly if you use unsmooth downmarket vodka. T_T

TONIGHT: Art loft party w/ open mikes and workshops! I'm bringing sketchbook ~~and Skittles vodka~~, friends are bringing ukelele and musical saw.

** Halloween compilation CD, model's own ($1.50 at a clearance outlet). Will maybe rip and upload as it is boss.

*** And, uh, speak Mandarin. Hey, I figure it's trial by fire - if I can manage talk radio and DJing in Chinese an English podcast ought to be no problemo.

Who is doing NaNoWriMo (or variants thereon)? I'm going to be writing, although I've set myself more structural goals than wordcount, which is not the usefullest metric as far as my process is concerned. XD;; Can always post a progress bar if that amuses, though.

Post the first line from your 25 most recent fanfics and try to find a pattern. (from

xparrot and a few others)

( I had to go back to early 2006, which is sad )

My style for writing JoJo really is different. XD And there are a lot of person-says lines, and semicolons. Other than that I dunno. Thoughts?

In other news, as 8tracks allows one to maintain more than one mix per username I think I'll up some of my old FSTs and such. Still prefer muxtape but there's a play count which at least disabuses me of the notion that no one really listens to my stuff. XD;

I will have to take this and this down soonish, so grab them if you haven't yet!

( I realized while paging back that I forgot to post visuals of Taylor Swift, so here's a video )

canis_m asked about fic I'd be writing (or thinking of writing) if I had the leisure to do so. ( It's a good question. )

For instance, we all know I'm never going to write straight-up Pete/Carl fic, because that's not far out enough. XD I'd rather write about Hedi Slimane. Wouldn't Hedi Slimane make a great POV character? XDD Hopefully he's not taking a break for too long. Contemporary art gigs are all very well, but the celebrity manorexics of the world are going to run out of trousers.

(That reminds me: I haven't talked about the NYC museum exhibitions yet. Er, stick it on the list. XD;)

Something else I want to write: an SSBB story based on one of Ezra Pound's Cantos. This is related to the above, for reals, but it'll take another ten paragraphs to lay out why. Well... here. For starters. And the whole Greek mythology thing (thanks for that, I'll never be the same again XD). And:

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,
London has swept about you this score years,
And bright ships left you this or that in fee,
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things.

There was another story I would've written for the current issue if I'd had the time, set in the same universe as the first SSBB piece I wrote, the fantasy one... and the cover stories I never completed. As

starlighter harangued, more PORN! I think at this point I would really enjoy having a whole year in which to do nothing but write, the tank is filled to overflowing.

Manga, books, job, and shopping will go in another entry. XD

Linguistics paper on incubation as part of the writing process (found by link-surfing from

worldserpent). The subject happens to be uppermost in my mind since I just started my

blind_go story today. ^^; I'm gradually coming to terms with the fact that this is the way my brain works: spending one month thinking about a topic and one week writing is more efficient than spending five weeks trying to write and failing. For one thing, one feels a lot better having spent the past month "incubating" rather than "struggling with writer's block", even if they are technically the same thing (and I suspect they are, in a lot of cases).

Most of the other publications on the site are worth a read if one's interested in topics like language acquisition or literacy (aren't we all).

( LOLworthy quote )

Today I attended a seminar on e-marketing. The Gears of War trailer was used as a demo. Verily it must be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a marketing executive to enter into Fandom - was my first reaction, anyway. OTOH someone who didn't at all grok fandom and fannish motivation would make for a pretty clueless marketer in this day and age, which come to think of it probably contributes to all the clueless marketing fans are used to seeing. But can one argue that more fans should become marketing execs in order to... provide fans with the marketing they deserve? XDD On a personal basis it would be like the aca-fan dilemma only more toxic.

Anyway I thought that was going to be the scary Lex Luthor content for the day, but then I went to the HR seminar on recruitment and retention practices. XD;;

(When I write about b-school I keep typing out stuff and deleting it. It's hard to tell what's relevant for recording purposes, I guess, or for that matter what's revealing.)

In other news: SSBB submission deadline falls halfway through midterm week. CHARMING. Though it serves as good incentive not to fall prey to the temptation of doing all the work again. XD

Link back to Part IX, for reference.

( LONG. Be grateful that I'm not threatening a DVD commentary, at least. XD )

***

Whenever I finish a fic I experience a bizarre fandom resurgence, like I have trouble letting go of the characters in some sense. Usually I read a lot of other people's fics (which is why a communal event like

blind_go is so much fun), but in JoJo this is pretty much impossible, so I end up reading Japanese fanartists' 4koma instead. They have plots like "someone stole Giorno's pudding out of the fridge, suspicion falls on all"; it's pretty awesome. XD

[Poll #1036644]

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Entries tagged with writing

Happy Holidays, all

Yuletide!

Is it already November? etc. etc.

I had an idea for another story

30 days of fanfiction meme (day 3)

Let's talk meme

Sooo Yuletide

I must remember that this is a fandom journal

Command-control-communication-intelligence

Kink bingo (redux post card assignment)

Doctor Who eps, considerably late

DrWho the fanfiction (thoughts, not links, it'll take time to scrounge up links)

Writing roundup (so where are the Yuletides you wrote, ppl? as opposed to recs)

Firsts this past week

Oh and

First lines meme (done out of curiosity)

Answering more questions

Notes of the day

Notes on Senza Fine (multimedia included ahaha)

Opinions pls