Osidiano

So bittersweet! This weekend I started taking down my stories on FFN. I didn't screenshot the reviews on the first dozen or so fics because I am a complete dumbass, but once I hit Simple, I wised up and included them in the pdf. So I won't be losing everything, yay! Saving things that bring me joy is good.

I decided to leave FFN because, after the scraping and people reposting my stuff from there, I kept getting those obnoxious Instagram "artists" looking to "collaborate" PMs. I got six messages in two weeks, y'all. That was too much, and there isn't even a clear and simple way to report those accounts, so I'm just done over there. It makes me really sad to feel like I have to leave after all this time, but the internet isn't what it used to be, you know? I'm really glad that we still have Dreamwidth, even if I suck at consistency and take long hiatuses in posting over here. But on the bright side, this has kind of brought me back and made me rethink where I want to spend my fannish time and energies. Right now, I'm just on AO3, a couple of fannish Discords (really, only one of which is active), and a local writer's Discord (which disaffiliated from NaNoWriMo after their whole fiasco). I have some other social media accounts that are linked to my IRL identity, but I probably want to prune those, too, in order to protect my data and my mental health. Ugh. We live in a hellscape, y'all.

In other news, I'm working on a Poolverine fic because I caught that DP3 brain rot and have been plodding away at Like & Subscribe for my UnoWriMo (Unofficial Writing Month). I'm still waffling about trying KindleVella, but I started some original stuff that I may attempt to post there.

Hope everyone is staying safe.

. . . Yeah, no. I guess that only sounds ominous with a cold season.

I updated Saving You Saves Me for the first time in five years or so last week, and that was pretty exciting. I'm halfway through the next chapter, but there's some transitional/secondary scenework that is giving me trouble. Thankfully, with the arrival of summer comes the arrival of summer camps that Baby will be attending, so I will have some daytime hours to myself to work through that.

I'm also trying to sell off my frankly prodigious YGO card collection on TCGPlayer, which is grueling because I am a grumpy dragon who likes to hoard. The deal I have with myself is that I will only the newer cards/stuff that I know isn't in anyone's show deck for now, so I'm not breaking up any of the character decks I've made over the years. Though I'm not getting rid of my Gravekeepers because that's what Isis runs in Pillars of Salt and now that I have access to subbed DM I may actually work on that, too. SHOCKING, I KNOW.

New year, new Snowflake, everybody! Whew! Today I'm updating my profiles on AO3, FFN, and DW. The only other 'fandom-y' space I use is Discord, so this feels really doable for me lol I mean, technically I still have an HiH account, but given that Keith hasn't fixed the site I don't feel too bad about my lack of activity there (RIP my bookclub and the Logical Lists).

Just sent off the first draft of Simple's Chapter 22 for beta! I'm slowly piecing together the next chapters/scenes, and I can't help feeling like some things are going to get dropped by the wayside or have unsatisfactory conclusions just so I can finally finally mark it complete. There are some scenes that I intend to repurpose for Pack Mentality and the other fics in that series, but that's a long way off, especially since I'm so easily distracted and not feeling very invested in the MCU these days.

I got pretty snippy with a reviewer over on AO3 about people marking my work as abandoned or leaving comments about how they "know" I'll never update again. . . ugh. It just makes me real tired, and not want to work on my writing, partly out of spite and partly just because being angry is exhausting and takes energy away from being creative. I wish they could have just left me alone instead of coming into a thread that didn't involve them to tone police me.

Challenge #15

Talk about Your Snowflake Experience. What did you come into it thinking or wanting? Did you get that? Did you get something else? Did you learn anything new about fandom, others, yourself? Are you glad you did it or thought it a waste of time and energy? You can tell us. We’re all here to learn and grow. What did you learn? How did you grow?

So, I came into Snowflake on a low note, as I'm sure most people did because 2020 sucked, and I was really really wanting to get even the tiniest feeling of joy and self-fulfillment that I used to have from fandom again. I was hoping for some bright spots and a sense of community. And I got that! I'm reading more fanfic, and trying to get through some meta. I have a bunch of fics and resources and wishlists bookmarked for later. It's been really nice and I'm glad I decided to participate and allocate time for it, even if I couldn't commit to being a mod this year.

A lot of people wished for folks to be more inclusive and to listen to POC fandom voices during the Wishlist Challenge, and I'm reading through the linked posts and trying to educate myself. It seems like most of the conversation has been happening on Twitter, which is definitely not part of my sandbox, so there's a lot of stuff that I'm reading about for the first time. It's a little bit exhausting, and totally depressing to think that that is some people's whole fandom experience, all the time. But I am glad that I'm doing it, even if it's hard and messy and uncomfortable. I feel like it's especially hard because there aren't a lot of acceptable spaces for me to talk about what I'm reading. And like, a lot of people have said a lot of stuff about it in their blog posts and on their Tumblrs and in their Twitter threads (and there's like a college text on it, but idk if I can stomach dropping $60 for the ebook knowing that it's written for other academics when I don't have a background anywhere near this, but I digress), but I recognize that I am early in the journey and it would be really douchey of me to comment or try to summarize on those blog posts/threads, because that's their space and they don't owe me their labor but I do need to converse to get through it, you know? I have to hear myself start to make the problematic rationalize before I really get it and go "OH. Oh, that's . . . yeah, I get how that's racist now." So yeah. That's been my big learning/growing thing from Snowflake. :B

Challenge #12

Resurrect an old meme. Have fun with it! Which is the goofiest meme you can think of? Put on your party hat and be silly!!
Nearest Book - 1. Grab the nearest book; 2. Open the book to page 123; 3. Find the fifth sentence; 4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions; 5. Don’t you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

So, I'm doing these out of order now in the hopes that I'll get them done this year. The first time I read this challenge, I was on my phone, sitting on the couch next to my daughter and spouse. The closest book that had 123 pages was my Encyclopedia of Baking. I got up, grabbed my coffee and my tablet (since it has a keyboard and is more conducive to blog posts), and the next closest book that had 123 pages was Serendipity Sundaes.

. . .

In my defense, my daughter loves to "make." Like, loves. I had to snag the old bread machine off my father-in-law so that she could make bread (she makes good banana bread). We've tried to make pretzels (a tasty but failed experiment), and she's made muffins and cupcakes and drop cookies before. I had her ice the Christmas sugar cookies and she gets to be in charge of spices when I make pasta dishes. And since she's two it is a pain and a half trying to find recipes that are toddler-friendly.

Anyway, here are the next 3 sentences:

"Roll the dough out until 3mm (1/4 in) thick, then cut out the biscuits, using a 5cm (2 in) round pastry cutter. Using a smaller cutter, cut out the centre of each biscuit to make them int rings. Transfer them to a greased baking sheet and bake in a preheated oven at 180-200ºC (350-400ºF, Gas Mark 4-6) for 8-10 minutes." From a recipe for vanilla rings.

and

"Chocolate shake
Use chocolate ice cream and Chocolate Syrup (page 45), adding 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Garnish with milk chocolate and dark chocolate shavings if you like." The page has 8 milkshake variations, and above this was the general directions for how to make a milkshake.

I also did the what number are you? quiz, and got Number 4, The Individualist:

You are sensitive and intuitive, with others and yourself.
You are creative and dreamy... plus dramatic and unpredictable.

You're emotionally honest, real, and easily hurt.
Totally expressive, others always know exactly how you feel.

At Your Best: You are inspired, artistic, and introspective. You know what you're thinking, and you can communicate it well.

At Your Worst: You are melancholy, alienated, and withdrawn.

Your Fixation: Envy

Your Primary Fear: To have no identity

Your Primary Desire: To find yourself

SPEAKING OF OLD MEMES. . .
Go take the hobbits to Isengard.
Jump roof to roof! To get your friends free cable. It's badass.

Challenge #5

In your own space, promote a canon/talk about a part of canon that you love. Whether it is to fix-it, honor it, or expand upon it, canon is why we are all here. So, let's celebrate canon today and talk about our favorites. Nostalgic, new, problematic, or forever canons are all welcome to be loved, dissected, and discussed. Have a favorite scene? A much-loved character? A much-maligned character? Just love the whole thing epically? Talk about it all or as little as you want!

Well, last year I promoted Ace Attorney, which is my forever fandom that I always wander back to. The year before that, I promoted iZombie, specifically season 3 but also just in general because it's a great show. 2018 was the first year I did Snowflake, but I didn't get as far as the Rec A Canon Challenge that time. I would recommend what I'm currently watching, except Netflix's Travelers doesn't have what I would call a good canon; it has a lot of missed potential, which I think makes for a good jumping off point for fic. But Elementary. Now there's a good show.

Yes, I know there are a lot of Sherlock Holmes adaptations, but I really do enjoy this one, and the way it handles various aspects of the canon and how it reinterprets things. Like, Sherlock isn't an entirely unique specimen of human brilliance; he's very smart, yes, and obsessively dedicated, but his skills as a consulting detective can be taught, and he does have two 'students' over the course of the show (Kitty and Joan). The reason why he can put all his time into cataloguing the differences in types of cigar ash or whatever is because his family is obscenely wealthy and his father bankrolls his lifestyle, so that's why he can only pick 'interesting' cases and doesn't charge for his services; it's sorta his way of giving back since he's in such a position of privilege. Also, while Narcotics Anonymous uses the same set up as AA and so isn't a very scientific program, I do appreciate that Sherlock's addiction issues are actual issues that he has to work through, and that we get to see the onerous work that goes into sobriety.

Uh, and I would take a bullet for Lucy Liu, who is fantastic as Joan Watson, and she is reason enough to give this show a shot.

"Challenge #3: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

In your own space, tell us who, from one of your fandoms, would you most want to have dinner with (or tea, or a random afternoon visit), And why? This could be a creator, an actor, a costumer, a set designer, a director, a character, a composer, anybody! What would you talk about? What are you dying to know? Just like there's no restrictions for time, space, or pesky reality, there's no pandemic restrictions, either. Who would you love to show up for a visit?"

Ugh. I'm actually not really a fan of these kind of exercises? Maybe I used to be, but now it just seems kind of silly and juvenile. It makes me feel like I'm back in middle school. Or maybe I'm just a grouch right now? :\ I have actually sort of done this scenario IRL before: I had dinner in Kyoto with Yoshio Sakamoto, the creator of Metroid, back in 2016, and he was really cool and very kind and almost definitely remembers me as an excitable goblin with horrible table manners. I cringe just thinking about some of the dumb stuff I said to him.

I guess I'd like to sit down with Daisuke Ishiwatari and ask him about the storyline progression in the Guilty Gear games, because he's definitely the only person who knows what the hell is going on there or why, and even that seems debatable.