Crossposted to wallwalker.

Since I finished the last one, except for the one where I didn't recognize the characters, let's try it again.

The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request that I write a drabble of any pairing/character. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level. (Feel free to modify exactly what's being requested according to your skills.)

As for fandoms, I'll try anything that I'm familiar with. So if there's something not on this list but that you know I'm familiar with, feel free to ask. These are the most common ones lately: FFIV, FFVI, FFVII (original game or AC,) FFVIII, FFIX, FFX, Valkyrie Profile (Lenneth and Silmeria - must get CotP, argh,) Star Ocean 2, Skies of Arcadia, Brigandine and Dragon Quest VIII.

1. pleiades: SO2, Dr. Lantis, "It is by coffee alone I set my mind in motion."
2. crankyoldman: SO2/FFVII, Cloud+Claude, "Where are the heroes"
3. lassarina: FFIV, Valvalis, flight, honor, sharp
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10.

In other news, been working on an original story again lately... I've been meaning to talk about it here, since it's very personal for me, but I haven't been able to. It's very allegorical. But my next post will be about that, or at least my next DW post.

Home sick, and bored.

Movie reviews of all of the films I've seen in theaters so far this year (unless I'm missing one. I'm not sure. In fact, I'm not entirely sure whether I saw one of these in January or last December. Either way.) In alphabetical order, with spoilers behind cuts.

Avatar

My boyfriend's dad took us to see this in 3D, and I'm glad that he footed the bill for it, frankly. (Although technically he's footed the bill for a lot of the films I've seen lately, considering that a lot of the ones we've seen since the beginning of the year were paid for by a gift card he gave my boyfriend for... was it his birthday? I think it was his birthday.) I try to do spoiler-free impressions for the others. Not bothering with this one, because if you're on the internet at all, odds are good that you know what the plot is.

When asked what I think about it by raving fans, I usually just smile and nod and say, "It was very impressive, visually - I can't believe the amount of work they must've put into designing and rendering it, and the 3D effects were actually immersive instead of just being a bunch of stuff flying at your face." I don't really have the guts to finish that statement with the finisher I want to add, which is something like, "...but the plot was hackneyed and predictable and has been done many times before, and the whole 'civilized guy jumps in and saves a bunch of savages from certain destruction by being more awesome at their lifestyle than they are' plot bugs me anyway, and it really felt like the filmmakers spent massive amounts of time making this fantastic canvas and then just drew stick figures on it."

I can't even really say that much about it. It was pretty. I wouldn't mind reading the worldbuilding notes that I've heard do exist; maybe I'd learn something about worldbuilding. The film itself, though... meh.

Daybreakers

Daybreakers plays with some interesting ideas, especially at first, but the filmmakers couldn't seem to decide what kind of film they wanted. You've got thoughtful bits about the situation that they're in, complete with social commentary, and then you have a cliche-packed thriller with gore and action and thrills. It would've been more satisfying to thriller fans if they'd just cut out the commentary, and if they'd wanted to make a commentary they picked the wrong vehicle to do it with, IMO. It's not a horrible film, but it's not a great one, either. (Also, while they are staying truer to the mainstream vampire legends than other "vampire" stories, some of the changes that they've made just made me boggle.)

( Spoilers )

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

It's a colorful, witty piece with lots of dry humor and plot twists. On the other hand, the plot is hard to follow, and I can definitely see why it was limited release in the US; it isn't likely to have widespread appeal to American audiences. Still, if you enjoy British dark comedy, it's definitely worth a look.

( Spoilers )

Legion

I'm having trouble being subjective about it. It hit one of my big philosophical squicks, if you can call it that, and I nearly walked out of the theater rather than keep watching it.

That said... it's another film that didn't seem to know what it wanted to be (action or introspection? Seriously, filmmakers, please choose one to focus on.) It didn't seem to know who it wanted to star, either. The action was okay, and Bettany does a good job playing characters like the one he was playing, but I still can't recommend it.

Sherlock Holmes

You really have to put your prejudices about Holmes aside when you watch this film; it's nothing like the popular portrayal of the character from other sources. But then, apparently a lot of popular portrayals were portrayed in such a way that Doyle himself never intended, and they did get a lot of the things from the books themselves right.

It's a fun movie, at any rate - I was a bit boggled by the direction that they approached the plot from at first, and by the direction that they took Adler and her relationship with Holmes, but it improved as I kept watching it. (Also, it's nice to see a movie that remembers that neither Holmes nor Watson were adverse to fighting when the situation called for it, and were in fact probably good at it, considering Watson's service and Holmes' obsessive training for all things that would make him a better solver of crime.) I enjoyed it, and I would totally see the sequel, if they end up making one.

That rant I've been talking about... I've been spending so much time thinking about it, and honestly, I really think that I've been chasing a pipe dream for far too many years.

( Trying to sort things out... )

GYWO: Going to try for 250K before the end of the month. I met my pledge in the middle of November, but I'm so close to the next level up and see no reason not to go for it.

I should be really happy about this, right? But I can't bring myself to be happy, because I have finished almost nothing this year.

( Cut for generalized impotent frustration )

Y!fic uploaded.

Waiting to get the all-clear on editing, because I know I'm going to find something wrong (and I'd still like to get it beta read just to make sure it makes sense. Am waffling on whether or not to ask for Britpicking. Probably should...) I did not get as far along as I had hoped, or as far as I think I would have if only real life hadn't happened, but for all of what I've been through this season, I think I did okay.

I may post a follow up later with the last part that I wanted to write, but it will take time, because I need to think about something else for a while now.

(Why upload it if it is just going to need editing? Because, as I said before, I missed the deadline simply because of life happening too much and too fast, and so I really couldn't bow out gracefully. I just wanted to make sure that my recipient had something for the trouble of writing out such a lovely Dear Writer letter for me, anyway. :)

Aside from uploading I've also been scanning the list of fandoms for something I recognize (not necessarily my requests, just stuff I'd read.) So far there has been v. little. Hoping that changes soon.

Well, it's finally happened, like I knew it would. I'm finally behind.

I'm currently at 35,297 for the month. I work this evening until as late as I need to, so it'll be a long day and I might not have much time to catch up. I don't think I'll have any time to write tomorrow because I actually have plans for Thanksgiving that take up the entire day (which is nice, for a change, but not conducive to writing.) I don't think I'll have any time to write on Friday because it's Black Friday and I work. (I still need to figure out how I'm getting to work; it would actually be better for me if I'd been scheduled at 3:30 instead of 6:00.)

To make matters worse, I wrote something last night, but it didn't save properly, and my computer did an automatic restart while I was catching some much-needed sleep, so I lost almost a thousand words. *headdesk*

I guess that the story itself is going... reasonably well? It's sort of redundant, though. I haven't succeeded in getting past the point in the plot that I reached in '03. My goal is to finish at least the basic draft, so I may keep going past November on this plot.

Guess I'll post this and see how much I can do before I have to get ready for work. Wish me luck.

Edit #1: 38,385 now. Exhausted. Why so exhausted? I don't get it, I get my eight hours... Gotta keep trying. Stopping to get ready for work at 1.
Edit #2: 39,161. Caffeine break plz.
Edit #3: 40,429. I took a break in there to shower and make lunch and buy caffeinated beverages. 1300 to catch up for the day; if I want to catch up for the next two days, I need to try for 45k. Not sure if it's doable or not, but I'll get as far as I can. (Slight annoyance - my GYWO database word count is about four hundred words higher for the month than my NaNo document. I have NO idea why. I must have lost some words somewhere that I counted for GYWO but that didn't get saved, and since I don't know exactly where they are, I don't know where to edit the database. Ah, well. Not going to worry about it for now.)
Edit #4: 41,726. Need to make sandwiches and get dressed for work before I keep going... caught up through today. As I said, though, need to see how much further I can get.
Final Edit: I'm at 42,345, and I'm going to have to stop for the day now; time to get my socks and shoes on and go to work. I wrote a total of 7048 words, according to NaNo's counter, so I'm caught up through tomorrow! Didn't quite manage to get caught up through Black Friday, but hey, I'll take it. Yay! (Thanks for cheering me on, lassarina!)

At some point I'm actually going to talk about the plot. (If anyone's reading this who followed my journals back in '03, you might remember this; I'm doing a rather simplified version of the same plot.)
I'm still trying to decide if the Backspace Disabled feature on WoD Desktop is worth it. I spend a lot of valuable seconds backspacing whether I have it turned on or not. Maybe I just need to get used to not having it on?
Also: I just did a word count on OOo Writer, copying and pasting from the text documents automatically generated by WoD (just about everything I wrote was on that application.) According to that, I have 7,936 words just today. A difference of nine hundred words... how is that even possible?
Apparently, though, I'm not the only one who's noticed. Makes me feel a bit better, and explains the discrepancies between my word counts in different places. I might have to think about downloading another word processor, though, if I can find a good free one... or, preferably, just find a way to update OOo's word count algorithm, because I like Open Office.

Okay, so, I caved in and got an account at AO3, thanks to renay. I've uploaded a few things to test it out, including some SoA fic I hadn't posted anywhere else yet. But I am resisting the urge to play with it any more for now, because I've lost my lead on NaNo and need to work on it today before I go to the gym.

Thoughts so far:

- Aesthetically, it's very shiny. I like.
- It's easy to add new fandoms, although I don't envy the people who have to decide what tags go where and so forth, because I'm sure that's one hell of a job.
- I am trying to decide whether or not I should ask to have VP:L and VP:S (and possibly the DS game at some point) combined under one tag... it would make sense, because they're in the same series and the same world and share some of the same characters, but they don't share all of the characters. It's kind of the same quandary as in Yuletide; they share enough that it would make sense for them all to be in the same category, but are different enough to make matching problematic if someone were to ask for, say, Einherjar-fic from Covenant of the Plume and got matched up with someone who offered "Any" but who hasn't played that game yet. But it would make sense to combine them too, especially since the Star Ocean games are apparently under a combined tag too. Will ponder this and send an e-mail when I get around to it.
- I'm... also trying to decide whether or not to ask for an M/F category tag for pairings, in addition to the F/M tag (NOT replacing it, because half of the het I've been writing needs the F/M tag.) Nervous about asking for it for some reason, though, so I'll probably just let it lie.

On the whole, I like it. The hard part is just going to be searching the internet for my old stuff (I've lost so many files on my dead computers over the years.)

NaNo - reasonably okay. I'm at just under five thousand words - need to try to get something done tonight. It's just been a very distracted night. Would've gone to the write-in if I was feeling better, but... let's just say that most of this morning, after I finally woke up, was spent taking lots of pain meds and sitting in a hot tub for almost an hour. Sometimes my body doesn't like me.

My current project, a rewrite of a cyberpunk novel I attempted in '03, is going well. I do need to refresh myself on the genre, clearly, but I'm remembering enough of the tropes that I can manage.

RP stuff - not running anything. Was going to try to finish up a game for some friends, but that's going to have to wait. I want to run a couple of solo sessions with someone - probably my boyfriend, since he wants to try out SR4 and I want to try to run it again sometime - just to stay used to it.

The main game that I'm in continues to be really, really neat... and I find it telling that up until November, most of the words I've written for it are for the wiki that we've started up for it. :)

Two things:

- Write or Die, desktop edition. Bought it two days ago, waiting for the eCheck to clear. Am looking forward to challenging people to word wars, once I know people who also have it.
- Cheap laptop or netbook. It doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't even have to connect to the internet. My only requirements are that it has USB slots for a flash drive and some form of basic word processing, even if it's only Notepad or something similar.

The last isn't really a requirement, I suppose... I just think it would help. I'm usually the only writer in my NaNo groups who's sitting at the write-ins with a notebook, and you really can't count your words that way until later. I don't have time to write everything twice anymore so that I can get the word counts; between friends, boyfriend and work, I am kept extremely busy.

I don't have much money to save up for it, though, so I probably won't get one anytime soon. Although I could always check eBay or CraigsList for someone's cheap used laptop, see what I can find.

I've given it a lot of thought, and I don't think I'm going to be participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I know that I succeeded last year - barely, and largely thanks to an idea that someone gave me and allowed me to use that managed to inspire a seventeen thousand word sprint in the course of seven days or so, but still, I succeeded. But this year, I just don't think that I can devote myself to a single project for that length of time right now. I've tried, and it isn't working.

Besides, and along those lines, I have too many unfinished projects to justify writing fifty thousand words of a new one that probably is never going to see completion. My other NaNo projects - both the few that I made the deadline for and the many that I didn't - are still sitting on my computer, unfinished. (I was fortunate enough to have them backed up, so I didn't lose them when my computer died.) I should be spending my time on finishing them, not starting a new one.

I may rethink this when October rolls around. Right now my writer's block is coming back - or was it ever really gone? Either way, I've gone three days now without managing to squeeze out even a word of fiction. It's not that big a deal - I've already managed to make my goal for this month, thanks to a lot of good days - but it still bothers me. And it makes it hard to even consider writing fifty thousand words in a month right now.

Maybe I should devote my time and energy to editing for a while instead. Wish I had something finished to edit, but I've got to work with what I have.