I'm gonna be king of the pirates!

how is it that I find myself once again dealing with an Absolutely Abysmal Christmas? I fear I've gotten into a bad habit of setting myself up for late-December agony and have nothing else to do but stay the course and see it through to the other side. oddly, the things I've been writing about the past few months have had a strange prescience in relation to that - weather the storm, see it through, keep it moving. I like to think up little mantras for myself and the little characters in my brain and most recently I've come up with "there is no direction but forward." reductive, but sometimes necessary when trying to wrangle an avoidant brain in to doing necessary tasks. if I allow myself even a bit of wiggle room I'll somehow manage to squirm my way out of important things and screw myself over for it, just for an ounce of relief. so, I'm doing just that. staying the course.

eventually the hardships of today will be gone. eventually I'll have all new hardships, but different ones, and I'll also have all new joys and delights and a million other things to look forward to. I just need to weather the storm. a few more days of agony and the weight will be lifted.

sometimes I hate how the corny things my parents would tell me as a child circle back around to being incredibly helpful as an adult. when I would complain about things being hard they'd often shoot back with "you can do hard things -" an incredibly frustrating thing to hear as a child, where my whining wasn't about incapability to do the task but rather a desire to worm my way out of it (hello again, avoidant tendencies) - but now I find myself chanting it like a mantra at work when feeling overwhelmed. I can do hard things. I can bear the brunt of these difficulties for just a little bit longer, just to see what's on the other side. I can survive another day.

...

anyway, in light of all these agonies I'm putting Jones Hall in a cup and shaking him up really hard. in my mind this would ideally be a three chapter thing, the first being Hall's first grasp of being a fictional character, the second being his deterioration as he gets lost in memories and can't tell the past from present anymore (as they're both fictional anyway, so what's the difference, really?), and the third being his inevitable complete disengagement with the fiction as a whole and seeing beyond into Real Reality - wherein he has a conversation with Me, The Fanfic Writer and I get to apologize to him for putting him in a cup and shaking him really hard. have the first-ish chapter, not yet finished:

( Read more... )

well, I was intending to do some other stuff today, but I've basically spent the whole of the day crocheting and writing. lots of good progress on this tapestry after so long without it! though I probably could have done some other, more pressing tasks. such is life. there's always tomorrow

I finished up that jaws fic I just posted, and I'm pretty pleased with it overall! it needs some filling out, for sure - I'm trying to let myself hop around when writing instead of rigidly starting at the first paragraph and ending at the last, and it's certainly encouraging me to actually finish things, but it means I kinda leave holes where more things should go when I'm putting together a rough draft. by and large, though, I am very proud of myself for actually writing something and submitting it by a certain time.

I have also somehow started and finished a slightly shorter thing for the next fan_flashworks prompt, and also wrote a few paragraphs for a completely unrelated thing. absolutely wild burst of inspiration from me here, and I'm hoping I can continue that streak tomorrow, as it's very late and I need to go to bed very, very soon.

I've been walking to a local coffeeshop pretty regularly as of late, and I'm thinking of going tomorrow as well... but I'm wondering if I'm spending a little bit too much on tasty beverages now. sure, I've got income, but since I'm only part-time right now it's not nearly as much as before, and I should probably be a bit more frugal...

ah well. it's fun to actually have a little ritual to look forward to. anyway, here's some more asteroid city stuff that may or may not become a full-fledged fic of its own despite my other unfinished asteroid city wip that I have been deliberately avoiding eye contact with for months:

( Read more... )

sitting in the living room distinctly ignoring things I could be doing and instead watching my roommate play a video game... very much preferred right now.

I had a hectic but nice day today - found a local queer craft meetup and decided to actually put on my big boy pants and attempt to socialize. my goal was basically "talk to one person once," and delightfully, I managed to get in with a little group and have a bunch of conversations!! it's only a once-a-month thing, but I'd like to keep attending and hopefully build up a rapport with the regulars. lots of kind extroverted people that just walked up and talked to people and, as someone who had to hype myself up to ask for a chair, that was very much appreciated.


anyway, concerning my various fixations and projects:


I've got a good roadmap for the Aperture Record now, and have started picking away at the Fun Bits that I waned to write in the moment, but I'm hitting a snag that I've basically seen coming the whole time, lol

House of Leaves works so well because of Johnny's interjections. he has an entire overlapping narrative that adds so much more dimension to the whole story. (i am Pointedly Ignoring all the people I've seen complaining about johnny's footnotes and saying they skipped them entirely. read the book however you'd like, of course - I'm not a Book Cop, and plenty of people have plenty of fair reasons for it - but all I'm saying is you're missing out on like... half the book.) as of right now I don't really have a solid Johnny-type character. I don't want this to be a portal plot recap in a fun format, I really want to Tell a Story here, but I'm coming up against a wall with what exactly I want that to be. the focus is definitely going to be on isolation and the cycle of abuse, in a general sense.

Wheatley is the obvious choice for a Johnny surrogate - long-winded monologues, inane tangents, etc etc... but I don't really want the Johnny surrogate to be interacting directly with the text. so now I'm unsure what exactly I want that Johnny-surrogate to be saying at all, and how I want their words to make their way into the Aperture Record.

as of right now, I'm thinking there will be random interjections (not only in the footnotes, but also randomly spliced into the middle of chapters and sentences, in random text boxes that break the website formatting, hidden links, popup boxes, the works) that are from Wheatley during his time between games. since he was basically left alone during the incredibly long time gap between portal 1 and 2, I figure he'd have a lot of very long and interesting monologues from him talking to himself to try and keep himself company (works with the theme of isolation, and it can also foreshadow what he does in portal 2 for the cycles of abuse themes). I'm also considering adding in a few Rattman things as well, as if he had hidden little things he wrote into random Aperture files in the hopes that someone would discover it someday. Things are still subject to change, but I think I can safely work on the first half (mainly concerning portal 1) and work out the second half as I go. (I love parentheses, these sentences can fit so much bonus information!)

depending on my ability to pick up on more complex HTML things, I'd also like to make the reading experience a bit more hands-on in the second half, rather than just clicking the next button on the website over and over. hidden pages, some stuff on completely other websites, etc etc. we'll see! I do plan on also posting a more accessible version on Ao3 at the same time though, for anyone who needs it.

ok back to actually writing now

I'm running into a bit of a problem as I continue to flesh out the plan for this Portal + HOL crossover (working title The Aperture Record, for obvious reasons) in which I'm really not sure what format this will take, nor where I'll post it.

the more I think this out the bigger it gets, and as much as it excites me and I'm looking forward to working more on it (I'm planning on also making my own illustrations and fake screenshots and blueprints!! :3), it's also making me wonder if there's a better place to post it for funky formatting than Ao3. from what I've seen I'm pretty sure their HTML could fully handle the stuff I want to do, but considering I'm going all out on the rest of this thing, putting it on a dedicated neocities website or something like that might be worthwhile in order to really have the whole thing come together in a satisfying way.

once I start considering making a neocities account I know a project has gotten a bit out of scope for me, lol

I generally try to keep my various projects small at the start. having ADHD I'm no stranger to getting swept up in an idea and piling more and more and more onto it in the high of the initial fixation and then falling off the wagon for one day and never opening it again. I'm fully aware this thing is getting away from me fast, but I'm so excited about the idea I'm hoping I'll at least get a bit further than I normally would. not to mention the other projects I've committed to with the School 2 thing my friends and I are doing, I've really got a lot on my plate here (self-imposed, because I'm putting off important stressful adult tasks again >_>""").

that being said! I am recruiting the help of some of my friends who have been fans of Portal for longer than I, so not only will they be able to help me with the Deep Lore Stuff but also they'll have their own unique takes and help me from getting too bogged down in my own brain.

now considering giving this thing its own special tab on here, because I may be posting about it quite a lot...

anyway! have a snippet of what I've written so far. I'm going stream-of-consciousness so far, minimal editing and just writing down what comes to mind. be warned: I am not an intelligent person, lol. I'm doing a lot of surface-level analysis and interpretation of deep and weighty philosophical concepts, and likely getting things straight up wrong. I'm committing the cardinal sin of academic research: using wikipedia as a primary source. this is all for funsies so I'm really not worrying myself with 100% academic accuracy right now. ok now that that's out of the way, here it is!

 

( The Aperture Record, Chapter 1 :3 )

had a delightful time today hanging out with my roommates - we went out to eat dinner at this nice Mexican restaurant nearby and stopped for a Trader Joes run and ice cream afterwards! I also met my weekly goal for my tapestry today (only 2 days in to the week, so I'm definitely giving myself a low barrier of entry here, but I'm compensating for if I ever get a damn job one of these days and find myself with a busier schedule) and worked on my Jaws animatic project. I've written out a daily schedule for myself and today was a personal art day, which I did spend most of my afternoon doing, but I had the steam and inspiration anyway so I figured I'd crack out just a panel or two on the animatic as well. I also got some reading in! Navidson and those darn hallways...

I'm really happy with my motivation as of late - having friends do projects simultaneously really helps the ADHD brain kick things into motion. I'm definitely not expecting it to last forever (I've been through this song and dance many times before), but I'm hoping I can pick myself back up when I eventually fall off the wagon and re-motivate myself, since this time I'm actually having a lot of fun with my projects and I don't feel like I'm forcing myself into it.

anyways, I finally figured out at least a little bit the direction I wanna go in for the next part of this Asteroid City thing (working title Breathing in the Dark... but BitD doesn't sound too pleasant to type out does it) so here's a little snippet of the beginning of act 2. possibly. unless I completely change it like I did act 1. who's to say!

( Read more... ! OvO )

more of this Asteroid City thing that's been pinging around in my brain like a screensaver... I have a loose idea now for the emotional arc of this and the direction I'm gonna go, but for now, here's what I have!

I often get really insecure about my writing since I seem to return to the same comfortable writing style over and over, and I'm not sure if it ever really works or if I ever successfully nail the emotion and feeling I'm trying to convey, but I had a friend look over an earlier version of this and they liked it! I also think it's pretty obvious just from my writing style that I was deeply invested in both Homestuck and various Wes Anderson movies at different points in my life... this is something that I simply cannot help. reading Homestuck during your developmental years does something irreversible to your frontal lobe. just how it is.

speaking of, it's about time I reread homestuck again....


( Read more... )

admittedly, I got into the fanfic scene pretty late in the game compared to how long I've been actively engaged in fandom circles. writing has always been a passive interest of mine, but I certainly wouldn't consider myself a writer, so I never really had any motivation to write fanfic. BUT! that's changed recently! and as much as I like writing my own original stuff I would never finish anything, just have these huge grand ideas and sprawling plotlines and give up on them 2 chapters in. so basically all that to say I'm writing some Jaws fanfic and am stubbornly attempting to see it through to the end... so here's a snippet of what I worked on today! The start of chapter 4 :3

After it all, adrenaline high long passed, washing up on shore felt almost alien. Sturdy ground under Brody's feet for the first time in nearly 3 weeks felt as unrecognizable as the boat had been, at first. Leaden feet stumbled and stuck in the sand. Aside from the sound of the surf and both of their ragged breaths, it was peacefully silent. Not even the gulls dared to call out.

For a long moment, the two laid still on the sand, half-out of the water, energy so depleted they couldn't drag their knees out from the surf. Too tired to even feel relieved. Brody's eyelids slipped shut of their own accord and he drifted, if not in body than in mind, for what felt like forever but surely had to be only minutes. His head swam with half-played memories and the strange ephemeral mutation of being on the verge of sleep. Just as the leaden weight of sleep began to drag him down, though, a voice cut through the cottony darkness. Light seeped in through the cracks.

"We should get into town. Can't lay here forever."

Hooper's voice was dry and rough at the edges, and nearly startled Brody in the silence. He peeled his eyes open to peer at the face opposite his own. Reddened cheeks, salty, cracked skin, but even still that wry smile.

"Unless you wanna catch up on your beauty sleep."

A beat of silence hung between them for just a moment, until a weary smile broke across Brody's face and the two began to laugh. Facedown in the sand, slowly but surely being buried by the gentle waves that lapped at their legs, they laughed, wild and unrestrained and bordering on mania they laughed, until they ran out of breath and even past then, eyes blurring with tears and hiccupping short breaths. The world felt so incredibly big out in the water, but on the shore it felt small enough to hold in a single hand. The shark was dead. It was finally, finally over.

If only it felt that way.

Brody caught his breath for a minute before finally moving. Hands propped up under him, he pushed himself upright, groaning with the pain of a dozen scrapes and bruises littered about his body, and what must have been a pulled leg muscle from the swim.

"Alright, let's get outta here," he called as he slowly rose to his feet.