Monday, March 31, 2003
Gaaaah!
It's official. My blog has stopped working. This will make three updates since the twenty fifth, and if this one goes through, they'll probably all show up at once, but more than likely I'm going to have to go into settings and make sure that everything still runs there. I know I haven't changed anything, but maybe I should find out if the akane.org addressing or password have changed. Hmmmm...
Krista still hasn't sent me the info for accessing the new utukki.com server either. I'm experiencing technical difficulties everywhere I turn.
Hopefully it won't be too much longer now. Ironically, I actually have been working on the fanart page. Shannon and Stephanie both sent me cool stuff, and there are some other cool pieces by people I don't know Personally, but who obviously have fabulous taste and artistic ability. ^-^
2:36 PM
Friday, March 28, 2003
I made a new blogger entry on the 26th, but it still hasn't shown up. Sure it was a one liner, but it was my very important message to the world! I'm betting it's going to show up as soon as I post this entry just to make me look like even more of an idiot.
Some of my close 3-D friends opened very cool fandom page at http://anime.101main.com/fangirls/. I'll be putting up a link to it from the Utukki page, but first I want to talk to them about the timing. Plus what they plan to do to compensate me. ^-^ In the mean time, people who read my blogger (both of you) are welcome to go check it out. That's right. You can finally learn what I'm talking about when I go on and on about Kim and Shannon!
Rachael has been working on my new layout. ^-^ See what a little gentle persuasion and well-timed veiled threats can do? It looks reallly good so far. I'm hoping she's properly inspired to put together a Hikaru no Go page for the new stories. Something pastellish and watercolory, maybe. (Just one idea, darling.) So the actual updating of my neglected fanfiction page will probably happen in a week or two. We'll see.
2:49 PM
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Yes, Kim. I tried to discourage you from working so hard to be like me. I may have been insensitive, and I certainly didn't mean to crush your spirit in any way, but is that any reason to try to kill me? You're over reacting just a little, I think. If you want it so badly, I'll do my best to help you, but no more attempted vehicular homicide/suicide. Promise?
Once again, I know I'm going to make powerful enemies by saying this, but:
A lot of the letters about my fanfiction lately have been about stuff like 'I really like your stories alot, why don't you write more yaoi?' -_-
Yes, yaoi. I'm not sure why. I don't exactly think of myself as the yaoi queen. I don't think it's bad or evil, and Sakura stories in particular are better when they don't try to pretend that the whole world is straight, but it's just not my thing, you know. If it's your thing, that's fine, but I don't exactly see the point to it when it's about a story where the cannon doesn't even HINT at shonen ai. Ranma and Ryouga do NOT make a cute couple, and while Shindo Hikaru and Touya Akira make a slightly cuter couple, and there is a real lack of interesting female characters in that series, so far I haven't written any 'Hikaru no Go' romances, nor have I hinted that I have any intention of doing so. Nevertheless, the yaoi faction has been actively encouraging me to join their cause. Even Hikago fans who can't possibly know that I wrote a Sakura story with some cannon-based yaoi in it want to know why I'm not writing fun make out scenes for the Hikago boys. (Yes, Quicksilver-san. You're not reading this, but if you were, I'd want to reassure you that I know you were kidding. Lots of other people weren't.)
In the rest of society, homosexuality is still considered fringe. It's becoming more and more accepted as a life-style choice, which is good, but it's not thought of as something that goes on most of the time with most of the men that could be remotely considered attractive. It seems like in anime fanfiction these days it's more like the rule than the exception. Am I the only one who thinks that's just a little bit strange?
The worst part is, if I decide to just go ahead and write the damn yaoi story that I have half of an idea about just to shut them up, it'll definitely backfire and I won't be able to write a romance free story or a het story for ANY series for the rest of my life without getting more 'Well, that was good, but where's the yaoi?' letters.
Still, I suppose it's better than not getting comments.
4:07 PM
Thursday, March 13, 2003
I worry about Kim. I love her like a slightly touched in the head sister, but she's somehow gotten the idea that I'm some kind of role model. ^-^
Hearing that someone you love wants to 'be like you when she grows up' is disturbing. I mean, besides the fact that it implies that I'm grown up in some way, it sounds like she aspires to be under-employed, overweight and bad at art someday. I'm not sure that's something you can teach. I mean, it just comes naturally to me.
She admires the way I smack down the people who piss me off in particular. Also not something you can teach. To do it properly, you have to have utter contempt for ninety percent of humanity, and it has to really show in the way you look at people, and in the tone of your voice. Her normal personality is just a little too genki to really pull it off convincingly. Plus, she'd forget what she was doing mid-insult most of the time. Yup. Sorry Kim, but it might be time to find a new dream. ^-^
12:26 PM
Monday, March 10, 2003
Just so you all know how much of a freak I am, the other day, I had a random impulse to get myself thrown into prison. Yeah, I know, it happens to everyone. You walk by a bank or a person you'd just love to kill and think about just doing it and getting caught and whatever. It was kind of like that, but without the trigger. I was working on the outline for my novel, and for a moment I was totally convinced that trying to finish it and keep working and trying to support myself like a real grown up was just too much for me to handle, and wouldn't it be nice if I got thrown into prison so that I'd have lots of spare time to work on it and not have to worry about supporting myself and paying for rent and food and stuff. I mean, sure, it wouldn't be all fun and games, but at least I'd have more leisure time than I do now and I bet they'd supply all the notebooks and pens I could ever want.
No, I'm not going to try it, I was just surprised by the amount of time that it seemed like such a good idea.
2:54 PM
Thursday, March 06, 2003
I am now officially pissed off.
I've worked really hard to get End of the World going over the past five years. There were times when it was difficult. When I felt out numbered and overwhelmed by people who swore by the English dubs of Bastard! or Sailor Moon. Times when I felt that the OTHER local club thought of EOW in general, and ME specifically as an irritant and an upstart, but now it's something to be proud of. Now we get about fourty-five people every week, and we watch stuff that's NEW and GOOD. Now it's a place where at least ten of my FAVORITE people on the PLANET feel welcome and loved and accepted. It's been one of the greatest accomplishments of my life, and I'm PROUD of it. I WANT people to know about it.
So last night, I show up at the weekly meeting, and there are two girls there that I've never seen before. One of them has a television camera and a large quantity of expensive and technical looking equiptment, and the other has a microphone, and they're both just as cute as they could possibly be. They do not ask if they can do a report on our club. I speak to each member of the presidency, and none of THEM have been approached about anything of the sort.
They were there for the ENTIRE three hour meeting mostly filming the regular activities. The club watching Hikaru no Go. The club voting for what to watch after Hikaru no Go. People out in the hall showing off their sketchbooks and manga collections. Stuff like that. Then. They decide they're going to do ONE interview.
Now, I really don't want to BE the person they're interviewing. This is NOT my goal. I don't like public attention much, and I REALLY don't think I look so great on camera. My feelings are NOT hurt that the rude uninvited strangers don't want MY face all over their video. What I AM hoping is that they'll at least want to talk to someone who KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT THE CLUB! Instead, they pick the prettiest person in the room. The new guy. The vaguely Asian looking pretty boy. The guy that everyone ELSE who's been in the club for a while is already extremely annoyed with because he's been coming for a little over two months and STILL won't shut the hell up about WHO we all think are the prettiest girls in the club and who HE thinks are the prettiest girls in the club and why and WHICH Jpop idols HE thinks are hot. JPOP! GACKT for the love of all that is holy! I kid you not!
Overcoming my instincts to fear and avoid outsiders, I approach the three of them, and put my arm around the boy and say to the girls "We love Kevin. We do. He's been coming here for two months. There are people who have been coming here for four years. It would probably be better if you got some information from someone in the presidency."
For which I got stared at.
When they were done staring, they went back to talking to Kevin about why there were so many people out in the hall instead of in the two screening rooms. When he'd stuttered for a sufficiently embarassing amount of time, I mentioned that a lot of people came to share their art work and web sites, discuss their stories, or just meet with their friends so that they had someone to talk about anime with. They looked at me, then looked at Kevin, then said to Kevin "Could you tell us all that out in the hall?"
Now, I know that I'm coming off here as a big attention whore. I know this sounds less than totallly altruistic of me. But EXCUSE ME?!?
There are people in the club who are dedicated, long-time members that are well spoken, intellegent, funny, AND physically attractive if they absolutely insist on that trait. Our vice president Kim Hessing, for example, would have been absolutely BRILLIANT in a television interview. It's bad enough that they so casually disregarded my objection. They then asked their choice of only visually acceptable person in the room to use MY words to explain what was going on. I asked around afterwards, but as far as I was able to determine, they didn't do ANY other interviews in the THREE HOURS they were there. I still don't know who they were, or what station/video club/planet they came from, but REALLY! How unprofessional can you POSSIBLY be?!?
Am I being totally unreasonable to feel like after all these years and all this work we've been slighted? Should I just be grateful that someone was interested enough to come at all? Is it wrong to prefer that NOTHING be said about us than the wrong thing?
I just don't know any more.
1:24 PM
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
It's a very good day. The fourth day of march.
I had a weird dream last night. It was disjointed and stressful and strange. It wouldn't make a good story at all. Nope. That's one of the problems that I have. When I was eleven years old, I had a dream, and I thought that it would make a fabulous story. Not just a story, an epic. SEVERAL volumes. A series of novels with spin offs and merchandising and a cartoon someday. I spent YEARS writing it, and didn't realize until I was fifteen or so that it was utter crap. A good first effort for an eleven-year old, but crap none the less. Despite this fact, the hours and hours that I spent working on 'The Green Story' have conditioned me to believe that the only time I get good ideas for original stories is when I'm dreaming. This dream I had last night would make a very bad story. Most of the things I think would make great stories when it's too late at night or too early in the morning seem really dorky when examined in the daylight.
There was, however, one detail of the dream that was interesting. A very realistic dream version of my younger sister as a mythical archetype that I can't get out of my mind. The more I think about it, the more the story is forming in my head. If this mythical character had really been like Jeana, how might her story have been different?
I haven't written anything original in years. Just fanfiction. But I've always told myself that it was practice. That as long as I was having good ideas for fanfiction and was able to write them with enthusiasm and re-write them objectively when people offered advice, it would be good training for what I hoped would be my life's work. For the past year or so, I've suspected that something big was on the horizon.
The Novel.
That's how I've always thought of it. In capital letters. With a surge of heroic music. In a Roman font, possibly carved into a temple somewhere. THE Novel. The one that I've considered taking a year off after I graduate in order to work on. The one that will get my foot into the door, and make me rich if not famous. The beginning of a long and illustrious career as a Writer. (Also capitalized.) I knew everything about this novel.
Except what the premise would be, or the characters, setting, or plot.
My mind has been absolutely racing all morning. The more the details lay themselves out in my head, the better things are starting to look. This morning there was one character, and now there are six. I know when it's set, what will happen, who will be involved and in what way, how it will end, how it will begin, and what the title will be. I just have to write it. I haven't been this excited about a prose project in years. I can make it work. I can avoid a lot of the mistakes I made when I first started writing fiction (perfect and invincible characters, extremes of morality, etc.) I can't wait to get home from work and start outlining.
Hopefully in two or three weeks, it'll still seem like a good idea. ^-^
12:03 PM
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