Laughter Through Tears

Of course, the most burning questions on my end are 1) Is someone going to vid Zero Motivation? and 2) If so, are they going to do it to every song that came out in the nineties omgf adjsfldg.

I mean. Is it just me or is this a hugely nineties kids movie. I know it's not just me. Right? Right?

I'm sorry I'm not sorry but this movie does things to my brain. I mean. It's a movie about the army that's not only relevant to my experiences but aggressively so. I MEAN.

I cannot with this movie. I. can. not.

For years I've been trying to put my mind to an original fiction project. I want to be a novelist. I want to tell stories. My mind is full of extrapolations and ideas and allegories that I want to explore more deeply. I'm always up to my eyeballs in story ideas, because every time I'm dissatisfied with a piece of fiction my first thought is, "No, no, no, here's how I would do it..."

That urge never really goes away. It's also not completely satisfied by fanfic. ( Cut for long, long rambling about my writing mental blocks. )

Oh, I made myself sad.

Prepare for my upcoming meta essay, "The Five Geek Social Fallacies, and how they affect poly fanfic." Just as soon as I'm done with exams and my brain can put words together again. Right now making anything seems like an absurd amount of work, I'm good for nothing but leaning back in my chair and passively consuming.

The octopus is the secret winner of Yuletide. In other news this year's Yuletide reminded me of some recs from last year's that I forgot (naturally) to post about. Tonight I will try to compile a proper recs post, give or take.

One funny thing about looking at Yuletide fic summaries, is that it gives me a strange urge to write fics that I will never ever write in fandoms that I'm not even really in. For example: the Deb-centric Dexter fic I'm not writing, a whole bunch of snippet ideas of Game of Thrones, and various other ludicrosities.

But really, the fact that the Kushiel books don't even have a teeny, tiny kink meme makes me so sad.

Let's go meta: Rec me recs lists of Yuletide fics.

Due to ponyville_trot hijinx, I've been bidding on an MLP:FIM calendar on eBay. This lead directly to examining the new pony models (Gardenia Glow? Hmm) and then even more directly to trying to locate this one lego set I was infatuated with years ago as a kid.

My brother used to have this fantastic castle set with knights and horses. We played with it together sometimes, but because there's a big(-ish) age difference between me and my older siblings, more often I played alone. At a certain point I got a small play set out of the newer series of castle legos that was coming out at the time. It was called the Dragon Masters series and by then I already had my heart set on dragons. The set naturally came with a catalog and the catalog had this spread in it.

Long story short, for about two years I had my heart set on the biggest lego set in the dragon series and I saved up allowances and holiday/birthday gifts devotedly, hoping to amass the legendary-sounding sum. By the time I was starting to get pretty close I was way above the age range of acceptability for playing with lego, and yet not old enough and wise enough to say "fuck acceptability" yet. Eventually I forgot about lego and developed other dreams.

Years later I suddenly remembered this lego set, in the way that one suddenly remembers childhood artifacts, at least if one is me. When I tried to recall what the set that I was in love with looked like, I came up with the strangest amalgamation of all the castle lego sets I had known and loved. Looking at the wiki (of course there's a lego wiki) and other evidence compiled lovingly by devoted collectors, nothing as grand and sweeping as the set I imagined ever existed.

Brains are funny.

Anywho, I'm thinking of buying nine of the super cheap two inch plastic ponies and making the world's first My Little Pony Hannukah Menorah. Good idea, or The Best Idea?

So I was going over a list of fanfic cliches that was linked through the Homestuck Shipping Olympics. It occurred to me to mentally check off which cliches I've written and which I've only read. Of course there's a list of all the stock A/Us, like the canon fork, the high school A/U, alternate selves... and the historical A/U.

There are a lot of common historical A/Us. I think ultimately the Victorian and Regency A/Us, and the semi-related steampunk A/U, reign supreme in most fandoms. Then you get the Western, and sometimes other periods. There are several popular, recurring fanart A/Us in Homestuck fandoms, mainly 50s-stuck and 30s-stuck. I couldn't see myself writing in these historical settings, although I've certainly read the hell out of them. The obvious answer to this conundrum would be to write an A/U out of the history I'm most familiar with which, no matter what anyone says, is not actually more cracktastic than a flapper A/U or Austen-stuck or whatnot.

But that still doesn't mean I'm going to act on the initial instinct. No way am I writing an A/U of the Jewish underground under the British mandate in Palestine in the thirties. Just... no. No matter how adorable certain characters might look in khaki. OMG my brain.

There's just something about fanart of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

( Read more... )

Basically I am supposed to be writing now. My junetide entry is both longer and more complicated than I had anticipate, and has trouble getting to the point. I have no idea where to look for a beta.