tempus fugit

( THE LIST )

I have two things left for kinkfest: Seishirou/Subaru for the twenty-third, which is late (but I have it on good authority that the prompter doesn't mind), and which I expect to write because it will let me use Seishirou's voice and I expect that to be a stylistic shift but a fun one, and Hisoka/Tsuzuki for the twenty-eighth, which I expect to write because I like those two and through work on The Epic, am finding that their dynamic speaks to me. A lot.

And after that? I'm done with challenges for a good long while. I have discovered that I don't need external stimulus to write things -- or if I do, that said stimulus doesn't come in the form of challenge prompts. Challengework just doesn't feel organic to me anymore, I guess. Looking back at the kinkfest list, fully half of which I didn't end up doing, I can see why certain prompts pinged me but not why they had to be written, why any of it needed to be said. I wrote two fics for kinkfest that are, in my opinion, two of the best things I've written using this handle -- Etymology and But Then I Shall Know... -- and I think that's a good note to end on.

This doesn't mean that I won't be writing fic anymore. On the contrary, dear Watson. *grin* I've discovered that I have the stamina and the patience and the plotting ability to do longer things. And I'm liking that discovery. I'm liking it a lot.

So what do I want to do?

( This, primarily. )

When will all this be done? Don't know. Some of it has deadlines, some of it doesn't. But I'm going to work on what compels, and right now I have a lot of things that compel. And they're my things. It feels good to know that I have stories of my own to tell.

Thanks, you guys. So much love for you all. <3

Also, stealing something from Mith, because Mith pretty much owns my soul anyway.

Ten Things I Assume You Know About Me, in no particular order:

( Here they are. )


In unrelated news, I'm writing Luck/Dallas -- uh, I guess the best way to describe it is deathplay. (Insert joke about "little death" here.) 'Cause, you know, Dallas never stays down for the count. My brain is a morbid place.

For this weekend:
[x] Go to Best Buy and pick up AC adapter, because I am an idiot and left my adapter in my dorm
[x] Xerox sheet music for giant huge big deal audition thing on Sunday (HYPERFUCKINGVENTILATE). "You'll Never Walk Alone" vs. "I Could Have Danced All Night." mmmaybe "Barbara Song" but I don't want to be too mean to the accompanist.
[x] Get outfit, resume, headshot, monologue, EVERYTHING in order for said big huge deal audition thing. so nervous aaaaa
[] Shadowrun and Burning Empires

For the rest of break:
[] Get absolutely smashed on Saint Patrick's Day. It's a heritage thing.
[] Convince mother to let me avoid attending church on Easter and let me go to audition instead.
[] VO work for Spriggs

Writing:
[] catch up on kinkfest, ehehe
[] Chapter Two of Fortune and Fools
[] Finish at least one het_challenge claim (and maybe even two or three by the end of break)
[] Big meta essay on how my acting background informs my writing

Reading:
[x] The Pale Blue Eye
[] Woman on the Edge of Time
[] The Monkey Wrench Gang

Gaming
[] Pick up new DDR mat
[x] Persona 3
[x] Suikoden V (yes. I has it now.)

Other:
[x] SLEEP FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WOMAN.

Let's see what ends up happening, shall we?

Be proud of me. I only took six prompts this time -- and all in different fandoms, too, which I wasn't expecting.

( And here they are. BSG, Baccano!, Petshop of Horrors, FFXII, Persona 3, FFVII )

In other news, I've been writing a LOT lately, which is good.

Why haven't you seen any of it?

Uh, well. The three main things I've been doing:
1) Eternity::Wayward Dawn, in which I am ROCKING IT HARDCORE as one Mr. Zack Fair;
2) The still untitled novel involving all of my favorite things (so, er, plenty of black humor and just plain blackness);
3) Fortune and Fools, which is really taking off thanks to me researching my little tuckus off about eighteenth-century theatre.

I'll probably post some of the snippets from E::WD that work well out of context, and I think -- I HOPE -- to get the first chapter of Fortune and Fools up by Friday or Saturday. Because it has AU and Balthier-as-Kit-Marlowe (I know, I know, wrong time period for the theatre I'm drawing from, but if you believe the theories about Marlowe being a spy, it works) and porn WITH plot. F'realz. And it is not being written for any challenge. It is 100% mine.

And that just thrills me.

Paper: COMPLETED. (Puel's Academics has increased!)

Still to come:
Three shows of Threepenny (aww, only three)
Two performance finals
One final exam
Finishing up as much of Justine and Sarah Present the Adventures of Ultragirl as I can

Threepenny's sold out the rest of its run, and we've been getting really good reviews. (Puel's Charm has increased.) I get to see the boy today for the first time in a freaking month. (The Boyfriend Social Link has reached rank 9!)

( A poll: where do I go from here? )

A brief summary of the state of things:

The Good
- Seeing my Chicago relatives over the Thanksgiving holidays. I don't get to see them that often, and it was nice to spend time with them.
- Eating real Chicago pizza.
- One of my cousins has a copy of Rock Band! Good times. We all looked ridiculous, of course, but that was half the fun.
- Not gaining weight over the holidays.
- The machinima project I'm doing voiceover work for has received at least 35,000 hits by now. We're probably at least past 40,000, since I last tallied everything up on Sunday and our hit count has been growing exponentially since last week, when we finally put everything online. We are popular on the Internets!
- Learning that I only have to take an actual final exam in one class. The rest are papers and performances.
- Rocking the SHIT out of rehearsal tonight. Woo. So psyched for opening night tomorrow.

The Bad
- Have had far, far less time to write than I anticipated. When I'm not in rehearsal, I'm too exhausted to write anything remotely coherent. I've managed to do some work on original projects (mostly for classes), but I miss writing fanfic. Especially since Persona 3 looks like a shiny shiny playground. And I have all kinds of scattered notes and scenes and things for Landis: Her Fall and Fortune and Fools.
- Possibly doing shorter things for roads_diverged because the longer fics I really want to finish might take too much time to complete. Unless I post them in installments or something. Hmm.
- The long drive home from Chicago, during which I had really painful stomach cramps.
- The cream-based stage makeup is going to do a number on my skin by the time Threepenny's over. Sigh.
- I kind of forget what this thing called "sleep" is. Also "food." And "reasonable workload."
- Final project due dates coincide with Threepenny performances. Of course.

The Awkward
- Belting out "Roxanne" while playing Rock Band and inadvertently pissing off my batshit crazy conservative fundamentalist uncle. (At least I didn't pick anything by Black Sabbath.) I mostly managed to avoid arguing with him, though, so progress.
- Accidentally revealing to my Irish Catholic grandmother that I'm technically no longer a Christian. oops.
- Going to see The Mist with my cousins because Enchanted was sold out, and then having the youngest cousins blurt out things about tentacles and oversized spiders to the adults. (The movie was pretty heavy-handed at times, but did a nice job of building up suspense. And the ending was awesomely devastating. Very Lovecraftian.)

"But Puel," you say, "what about the fanfic?" Well, I'll have two things up for roads_diverged, and the rest of December will probably be devoted to gift things and a bit more work on longer-term projects. And Yuletide.

I kind of wish Sunday would come quickly. I don't have to perform on Sunday. I might be able to sleep on Sunday.

Before I go to sleep tonight, I want to have chapter one of Fortune and Fools finished. Of course, now that I'm on top of my homework, feel less stressed out about the play, and am not fiddling around with the PS2, I'm not getting the "HEY HEY TIME TO WRITE" messages from my brain. My brain is stupid.

I had enough time today to log a few hours on Persona 3, though. So that's Shinjiro. Mmm. I don't get him as a playable character, do I? I'd much rather have him than Yukari. Yukari annoys the hell out of me. I hate that I have to keep her in the party because she has all the healing skills.

I keep feeling like there's something I've forgotten to do, though. I'm not sure why. I might just be paranoid/overtired/whatever.

Oh, and meme! I stole this one from tenshi_kain.

Pick one (or more! I don't mind) fandom(s) of mine and I'll tell you as much of the following as can be applied:

01. The first character I fell in love with
02. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now
03. The character everyone else loves that I don't
04. The character I love that everyone else hates
05. The character I used to love but don't any longer
06. The character I would shag anytime
07. The character I'd want to be like
08. The character I'd slap
09. A pairing that I love
10. A pairing that I hate

So I have actually been writing this month. I just haven't posted much of it yet.

I have some extant challenge things hanging around and waiting to be completed, but I'm at the stage where I'm just too goddamn tired to write things that really don't want to be written. And I can wail and beat myself up about it and force myself to write it, but -- you know, I keep telling other people that Fandom Should Be Fun, and it would be rather hypocritical of me not to follow my own advice, my overdeveloped sense of guilt aside.

(I will, however, finish the one-sentence ficbits. Probably tomorrow. For realz.)

In good news on the fanfic front, though, the first chapter of Fortune and Fools is almost finished, so I can post that at roads_diverged and not forfeit my FFXII claim. I might just take one of the many FFXII/Firefly crossover things I've written recently and expand on it enough to hit 500 words or beyond to get a Firefly thing out of the way. Landis, Her Fall is going a bit slower because I'm not writing it in order. I have the prologue, part of the epilogue, a chapter where Noah goes a bit crazy, and a chapter where Drace and Zecht talk about the situation in Landis. (That might end up being chapter one.) I am so excited that I'm writing chaptered things now. It just makes me happy to think that yes, I do have bigger stories in me, and yes, I have the stamina to write them.

I am also kind of loosely doing NaNo. Loosely. As in I'm working on a lot of different things and because of this I might actually get 50,000 words of Stuff out this month. They just won't all be the same story.

I'll probably post snippets of an original project or two under my original fiction filter, because there are a few things I'm crazy excited about there.

Now if I can make it through Threepenny rehearsal tomorrow without having a miniature nervous breakdown, life will be good.

ETA: Quick question for paid users. I really like the style of my journal, but I really hate that the comment pages don't look like normal comment pages but instead use the journal's format. Because I can't see anyone's icons. And the text gets smushed. Anyone know how to fix that?

a) Fairy-tale claim for yaoi_challenge is almost done. Mith's birthday present is three-quarters done. (Kara and Leoben and violence, baby.) Film noir is 1000 words but might not be finished by October 31 unless I cut class or something. And then no more challenges. Except yuletide. Freeeedoooooom.

II) Three days until my birthday! <3 I don't know how much in the way of presents I'll be getting, because my dad's said I'm getting a car in February, but it's all good. Because car. I'm not hugely fond of driving, but I really need a car.

three) Stolen from flame_king:
Comment, and I will comment back with a picture of the fictional character that most reminds me of you. Then post the same in your journal.

I don't know how much I'm going to finish this weekend, since the boy and I are celebrating our one-year anniversary a weekend or so early (stupid exam scheduling), but here are snippets from stories I have in-progress.

I'm snapping out of the challenge funk a little, I think; my yaoi_challenge pieces really let me play with different styles of writing (first-person noirish narrative and elevated almost mythical prose), which should be fun, and the three springkink pieces I took are a little lighter in tone. Except for one, but I can do some neat stylistic things with that one, too, because it's an Utena/Sandman crossover. As for het_challenge, I just like doing mean things to Gabranth zombies turning resurrection on its head, and the direction I want to take with that one is TOTALLY GEORGE R. R. MARTIN'S FAULT. Fans of ASoIaF can probably guess where I'm going with this. *grin*

Anyway. Bits and pieces!

For yaoi_challenge: "The Naming" - FFXII, Basch/Noah and Basch/Vossler, fairytales, breaking and mending
( Once upon a time )

For roads_diverged: Untitled so far but I'm probably stealing from G&S - FFXII, Balthier, cosplay: pirates. (This isn't what you think it is. Trust me.)
( And what would you have of me, Captain? )

For roads_diverged: "Big Rock Candy Mountain" - Firefly, Simon and the rest of the (male) cast, society: prison.
( Serenity Valley Detention Center )