Bluestockings

I'm writing an analysis on W. H. Auden's poem "Musee des Beaux Arts" for English, and am being unfairly attacked by plot bunnies of the Inheritance Cycle variety in the process, x3

( In which poetry feeds the plot bunnies )

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

(Landscape With The Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams)

Eventual goal: to get an account at Archive of Our Own. News report from the OTW site! For reference, =)

It's always a good day to show a bit of fandom love, =D

Multi-fandom love and fanfiction recommendations under the cut.

( Legend of Zelda )

( Super Smash Brothers )

( Inheritance Cycle ) 
-</div>
( Chronicles of Narnia )

I will be editing this entry - it needs more recs.

In other news, LiveJournal drives me crazy. Is there an option to save a post and return to it later in the basic account, or is that only an option in an upgraded account? I haven't lost a post yet, but I'm going to. I can sense it.

I'm taking a speech class, this summer, at the community college near my home. The speed with which we tear through the principles of speaking leaves me utterly exhausted; in two weeks, we've covered enough material to span twice that amount of time. We give our first graded speech tomorrow - the informative; I took the process of revising college essays as my topic. I am in utter despair about the outline. I know what I wish to say, but have floundered over the research, which has become more a matter of finding scholarly works that agree with the points I have already made, instead of providing me with points to make.

I can't even resort to fiction to calm my nerves. I've neglected my speech outline for too long and I can barely concentrate on writing stories when it simmers in the backdrop, prominent for all its invisibility, eating into my thoughts for all I try to rid my mind of it.

I can't wait until this is over, D: Sadly, though, this speech is but the beginning: it opens the door to the ceremonial speech, and afterward, the persuasive speeches, one of which I am dreading: it will be a group exercise. I don't like groups, :<

I am looking forward to the ceremonial speech, where I can speak in fulsome praise of some topic of my choosing, x3 I'm considering taking children's literature as my subject; I've rediscovered an appreciation for it. I'm rereading Lois Lowry's The Giver; I loved that book when I was much younger and was terribly happy to discover that I still love it. Who can not love the discovery of the colour red? :D

I used to wonder about the word "hiatus" when I was new to fandom, for I seemed, too often, to stumble upon the word: a story so marked (whatever could that mean?), an author reemerging (with new fic for everyone!) As ever in these matters of vocabulary, Dictionary.com was my friend, but there is nothing like experiencing a word for oneself: it instills the meaning more perfectly than reading a dictionary entry with half-glazed eyes and a mind turned to other thoughts; the relevance of it is like a good meal: absolutely satisfying (particularly when the experience is over and done with, x3).

I've been on something of a hiatus, not only from LJ (where I never truly <i>was</i> to begin with) but from all things Internet. Perhaps life was busy or its minutiae pressing (as minutiae often is in its insidious way). Perhaps I was mentally exhausted, and perhaps it was the writer's block (or writer's ugliness, as I have taken to calling it, that dreadful state when a writer is not so much <i>blocked</i> as unable to write anything worth reading). But those months have gone, at last, and the sunlight calls (requesting I stop pulling out my hair and threatening bodily harm toward my computer now it has returned). I've begun writing again (and have determined to "start finishing stories again", rather than merely "start writing" them, as I have blindly resolved to too many times, and have done all along; it's the finishing that I never get around to). And it is lovely.

As usual, I've tons of projects I hunger to tackle, but they're all old projects I've abandoned for shiny new ideas (which ideas have been abandoned in turn for their elders and betters, for such things, virtue of their venerable age, deserve to be attended to). But all that in another post, which forms itself in my mind even as I conclude this.

Hello again, fandom world. So pleased to make your acquaintance again, :]

A passage from TV Tropes, regarding Ed Edd N Eddy:

( Spoilers for the third season... )

Reading through its TV Tropes article reminded me that I liked Ed Edd N Eddy even after I had learned to dislike everything else on Cartoon Network. Now I really want a chance to watch that show again, ._.

I'm currently readingThe Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, by Stephen King. It's a fantastically riveting tale, surpassing any and all expectation I entertained prior to the reading. I don't particularly like stories that take place in the outdoors - lost in the woods, lost at sea - at least, I don't care for them at the outset. But I'm usually snared in the end, caught with my jaw hanging and my pulse thudding as I plow through the pages, desperate to know what comes next, needing to discover if our brave hero will find his or her way back to civilization, wild to reach the climax, the final, epic showdown between Mother Nature and the main character, to see just who will emerge victorious.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is no exception. I avoided checking it out from the library, disheartened by the thought of a girl lost in endless forest and having no one to talk to and all the conflict arising from the hell Mother Nature gives her - fascinating, I'm sure, but I just don't go for those kind of books. But then the day came when I thought to myself, "It can't hurt. And if it does, I have a whole shelf of books I haven't yet read." I checked it out and sat down to read and half an hour later I've found myself a fifth of the way in, hooked. And with every passing page, it only gets better.

Until the first time the POV skews out of focus and King wrenches me from Trisha's POV for a moment to tell me what her mother and brother are thinking.

( WHAT THE-- )

Mah Autumn Write projects for 2008.

And one would be wise to ignore the post below, x3

Found the autumnwrite community half an hour or so ago and thought I'd take up the challenge. 150,000 words in four months, including the month of NaNo; 1,230 words per day. I'm officially starting tomorrow, as I want to put my thoughts in order.

I have two ideas currently, that have been simmering in the creative cook pot for half a year now. The first is original fic: a kelpie is stalking a young woman, intent on revenging himself upon her for something she did. But she is not prepared to suffer the terror he causes lying down. She turns around and begins to hunt him, determined to destroy him even if she must cheat death and fairy goddesses to obtain the chance to do so. Best aspect to it: I get to retail a truckload of fairy tales. Always a plus.

My other idea is fanfiction - Legend of Zelda fanfic, to be precise. It's a nebulous idea whose heart I have not yet discovered; I'm still searching for its core plot amid its trappings: the Zora, a crushed people; their prince, ward to their conquerors, who swallows volumes of Zora history in an attempt to alleviate his shame of and his obsession with his race and culture; the Hylian knight whom rumour whispers went insane, who lurks in the library listening to Ralis reading history books aloud, who thirsts for stories, for legends, because he believes he was one at some point, and will be again. The two end up traveling, the knight under the delusion he is the Link of legend, determined to save his people, Ralis as his storyteller, his caretaker as his mind slowly falls to bits, Ralis, still obsessively searching for his people in every place except where they are. A journey across the country of Hyrule and the surrounding lands, a cornucopia of characters with roles both reused and re-imagined from the canon. It ends with the goddesses flooding the world. And somehow, I have to link this whole mess into a plausible and coherent story, x3
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Found a fandom meme community. Am crazy happy because it's late and I should be sleeping.

5 Series 10 Questions meme

The five series I shall be working with:

1. Song of Fire and Ice (<333)
2. Harry Potter (old favourite; nostalgia made its demands, and I obeyed)
3. Twilight (desperation bid me add this; I was lost for ideas)
4. Inheritance (half desperation, half guilty pleasure, all laughs)
5. Inda (its compleity about kills me, but having slogged through Inda and found a smattering of enjoyment in The Fox, I am driven to finish what I began - and what I am growing more fond of by the moment.)

( And now, the meme: )

Sure, they're useful when you're listening to a story: when you need to stop listening, you hit the stop button and that's that; no waiting for the track to finish, as is the case with CDs. They aren't so easily scratched up; you don't have to handle the player delicately for fear of skipping.

Instead, they have their own cornocopia of issues.

The player keeps switching off by itself, for instance. I take out the tape and tap it "firmly" (as listeners are urged to do on older cassettes that hail from the time when, apparently, ordering audio books from the company that produced them was a common practice) against the counter; replacing the tape and turning it back on, I find my problem has doubled: the voice slow and dull, the words slurred, fallen in volume. And the player keeps switching off. That firm tap now turns into a "slam slam slam" against the counter; again I replace the tape and while it stays on, the voice is reading even more slowly. I decide suffer and listen, but after five minutes, my tension and frustration at the sluggish voice had driven me near to retching; this is worse than the pastor reading two pages of scripture on Sunday; it is only through the power of my will and the thought of library fees that keeps me from throwing tape and player into the rain.

Such a misfortune that the majority of books I want to listen to are available only at the local library on cassette.

I've had a short essay called "Fanfic: Force of Nature" bookmarked for goodness knows how long, and have only now gotten around to reading it. I've not yet ventured into the comments - there's something intimidating about the size the cursor has been reduced to - but the essay makes its point satisfactorily, particularly when the author notes that, "Putting that label [the label of fanfic] on a work of fiction says nothing about its quality, its creativity, or the intent of the writer who created it," and "We have a system that counts some borrowings as legitimate, others as illegitimate."

I'm happy to add that second quote to my cache of "words on fanfic", right beside "fanfiction is a conversation". As it really is, x3

Lah! I can finally - properly - try a prompts challenge for Ganondorf/Zelda. I think we shall be great friends, LJ and I, <3 now that I may toss across its pages half-formed and wholly unjustified blasphemies upon the name of canon in the form of fluffy G/Z (if, of course, my request is favourably met). My computer is far, far, far from agreeing with our acquaintance, however; it has just now protested by threatening suicide, and forcing me to reboot. It doesn't like LJ, and it positively hates Wordpress. No wonder Blogger is my homeblog, :<

001.	OTP	002.	Couple	003.	Cry	004.	Laugh	005.	Anger
006.	Control	007.	Trouble	008.	Cops	009.	Hospital	010.	Sickness
011.	Blue	012.	Red	013.	Black	014.	White	015.	Colors
016.	Food	017.	Pizza	018.	Taco	019.	Toast	020.	Cookie
021.	Soda	022.	Beer	023.	Drunk	024.	Wine	025.	Party
026.	Parents	027.	Aunt	028.	Uncle	029.	Brother	030.	Sister
031.	Car	032.	Motorcycle	033.	Truck	034.	Mini Van	035.	Hummer
036.	Flower	037.	Tree	038.	Seed	039.	Catcus	040.	Root
041.	Bird	042.	Cat	043.	Dog	044.	Fish	045.	Fly
046.	Hunting	047.	Fishing	048.	Baseball	049.	Soccerr	050.	Hockey
051.	Water	052.	Fire	053.	Earth	054.	Air	055.	Storm
056.	Friends	057.	Ex-Friends	058.	Enemies	059.	Lovers	060.	Ex-Lover
061.	Snow	062.	Rain	063.	Heat	064.	Fall	065.	Hope
066.	Necklace	067.	Ring	068.	Watch	069.	Ear Ring	070.	Bracelet
071.	Time	072.	Minute	073.	Hour	074.	Second	075.	Day
076.	Death	077.	Life	078.	Rebirth	079.	Heal	080.	Curse
081.	Concert	082.	Singer	083.	Actor	084.	Writer	085.	Read
086.	King	087.	Queen	088.	President	089.	She	090.	He
091.	Birthday	092.	Christmas	093.	Thanksgiving	094.	Halloween	095.	New Year
096.	Writer‘s Choice	097.	Writer‘s Choice	098.	Writer‘s Choice	099.	Writer‘s Choice	100.	Writer‘s Choice

Came across femgenficathon  yesterday, perused the rules, went starry-eyed over the prompts, and said to myself, "I know what I'm doing next year, :D,"

It probably isn't wise of me to continue feeding my insatiable love of writing challenges. I was once discussing an idea for a novel I had with my dad, in what I suppose was a flat and gloomy tone, and he suddenly asked me if I was looking forward NaNoWriMo. "Of course I'm looking forward to NaNoWriMo!" I exclaimed, perking up. "I'm bursting with ideas for a novel--" My dad watched me grinning and rambling on for a minute, and then said, "You don't seem half that excited for that other novel we were just talking about."

His comment was true--and quite deflating, x3--I felt bad, that I was turning cartwheels over a challenge someone else had given me in the vaguest sense of the word, yet couldn't bring myself to crack a smile over my other projects, stuff I would like to one day publish.

( I'm too often on the cusp of giving myself cardiac arrest from the way I write my wants-to-be-published work. )

Still trying to figure out LJ. metafandom has been serving as my guidebook, though I should no doubt branch out (despite how wonderfully familiar fandom is). I need to read up on memories - I'm curious as to why so many people use them to catalogue posts on their own journal rather than posts in other journals. (Though perhaps they do, as there's that "Friends" and "Private" option). "Memories" is a lovely organization device, I've discovered, but so far I've been using it like Fanfiction.net's "favourite stories" feature. I keep wondering if I'm supposed to, x3

I'm starting to suspect my computer doesn't like LJ much.

When describing to someone a story I am working on, I sometimes make the mistake of first categorizing that story as "fantasy".

I call this a mistake because the word "fantasy" often, in my experience, deflated the enthusiastic listener, robbed them of their interest, shut their ears to anything I might follow my intial words with. The genre is often taken for a "lesser" form of fiction, an escapsist's pleasure, literature lite to be indulged in when one cannot take the world and needs to forget it for a while, something that should be relegated to childhood and never entertained by the self-respecting adult. Fantasy is fast food to the king's feast of literary genres; it is the relative everyone pities and is ashamed of, the one who talks crazy talk at Thanksgiving dinner and makes the hosts and civilized guests squirm in their chairs.

Fantasy is that silly children's genre with all the elves and talking dragons and magical swords. It's Lord of the Rings and every doorstopper epic that imitates that trilogy; it's Harry Potter and an embarrasing collection of films with sparkling magic and bad dialogue. Fantasy is Disney. And none of those stories really expand the intellect, now, do they?

It's a conversation I've had with my father several times: he maintains that while fantasy is capable of fantastical feats and bubbly entertainment, it is in the end too simple, too derivative, too dependent on archetypes and safe, moral lessons to truly challenge the reader.