nause: me on a kayak, but not yet in the water! (Default)
 

Big Decision has not been made in actuality, but it has essentially been made, which is hard to come to terms with; both are options were good options and had different strengths, and I can’t help but wonder how my life might turn out differently if I chose Option B instead of Option Y. But it is Option Y, I’ve decided.

I’m simultaneously extremely excited and horrendously nervous and I wish so much that I don’t have to go through Exams to get there. I’m not too worried or stressed and am sort of oscillating between quietly confident and vaguely anxious, but I really just don’t want to do them. I’m good at exams, normally, but I’m not the sort of person to thrive in that atmosphere. And I’m fed up with the worst part of the year (weatherwise) being spoilt by Exams, year after year after year.

I am also a bit ambivalent about my writing. It’s not dreadful, but characterisation and dialogue is so hard!

The major problem at the moment is that I’ve almost exhausted Dark Matter fic in my head. I don’t have much more to say. But the fandoms that I do want to write for feel out of reach. Mostly because the fics in my head are mystery type things set interwar or otherwise historically, and a. I don’t know enough of the social history. This could be rectified but not right now and not in the foreseeable future; I don’t have the time, funds, or freedom. b. I’m not good at plotting. c. linking to b., I don’t have the life experience to plot murder mysteries because they depend on small details, and d. I don’t know what it was like to be an adult before the internet and that’s really hard to research or find out about, because it didn’t need to be written down!

These are to a certain extent excuses. There are bits of research I could do – and that would be enjoyable. And there are smaller stories that don’t need full out plotting  or in-depth historical knowledge, but then my problems with characterisation and dialogue come in!

There are things I’m writing, mostly in the HP fandom, so it’s not all bad and tbh I need a bit of a break anyway. Writing a treat for Yuletide, four fics for Chocolate Box, and now three (? – depends a bit, but probably) for H/C was a bad idea.  Writing is good stress relief for real life issues right now, but looking back I’ve probably overdone it – not that I regret doing any of these exchanges, I absolutely don’t; they’ve been amazingly fun!

 

~~ (a couple of days after writing the first bit)

 

England is in the occupation of some absolutely glorious weather! I have been lazing with a book on the grass, mostly, and watching the cats! This makes me very happy.

I reread the first two Murder Most Unladylike books, which are brilliant even though I’m far too old for them. I wish they’d been around when I was little because I’d have adored them. I am also making my way through Not In Front of the Servants by Frank Victor Dawes, which is the best sort of social history, comprehensive and illuminating – everything about the period and its ideology and ethos just snaps into place as you read it, everything makes sense suddenly. I might talk about it more after I’ve finished.

Oh, it’s such lovely weather!

nause: me on a kayak, but not yet in the water! (Default)
 

I completed the Fansplaining questionnaire on shipping behaviour yesterday, and found it very interesting the way that they divided ships into ‘active’ and ‘casual’. Instead of ‘active’ and ‘passive’ or ‘casual’ and ‘intense’.

There are a lot of ships that I have that I wouldn’t say I’m an active shipper of, but am definitely not casual about—ships that mean a lot to me and that I love but will never go beyond idle speculation or passive consumption. And then there are ships I’ve written or actively commented on etc. but don’t feel that passionately about.

Anyway, aside from that it was a really cool survey, and it got me into thinking about multi-shipping and my own tendencies. I’ve never found it in myself to ship a character with more than one other, either poly or separately, so when it comes to ships that I find myself reading despite not knowing canon (simply because the fandom is producing so much good stuff!), I tend to fall into juggernaut pairings, because that’s what I am likely to see first and imprint on. In larger fandoms with lots of space and interesting minor characters, I may get into rarer pairings, like in HP with Ginny/Luna or Seamus/Dean.

It seems a bit of a shame, but it’s not really something I can work around.

 

In other news: h/c is going surprisingly well after a (minor!) hiccough, although I am aware that realistically I have two weeks left before real life will prevent me from writing much. So it’s full steam ahead!

Big Life Decision is starting to look impossible and somewhat imposing. I’m not the sort to regret decisions after they’ve been made but I am extremely indecisive and I’m not sure what to do! Deadline looming etc.

But aside from worrying about that, I am surprisingly okay, which is odd because I shouldn’t be, really. I should be much more stressed. I keep thinking that maybe I am, under the surface, but I don’t think I am? Weird times, weird times. Can’t wait for the summer.

 

Also! We watched the fifth series of Shetland and have now embarked on the first. The fifth series was… kind of terrible on a plot level, laughably so at times, but not in a way that prevented me from being at least halfway invested in it. There’s something indescribably, intangibly hilarious about Jimmy Perez’s face, or maybe the way he moves in space or just stands. I’m not sure what.

Speaking of intangibly hilarious things, I’ve been watching Alex Horne and John Robins’ YouTube series ‘Bad Golf’, which is… just the best, omg. Mostly it’s just chill and funny without being concretely comedic, but on occasion I’ve been shaking with laughter and I’m not sure why. It’s a parody of……… something?

Weird times, weird times.

nause: me on a kayak, but not yet in the water! (Default)
 

Am currently rewatching W1A and trying not to think about how unproductive I have been, this last week. But the cat is here and I’m alone otherwise and I’m drinking vinegar. Thinking about the new HP film, mostly with dread.

 So my current mood is Will! Will! Will!  whilst trying to forget that I should do some work tomorrow. Instead I will probably have a bath and finish rereading Right Ho, Jeeves, though I should probably – should probably! – be reading something I haven’t read before.

 Also facing a slow death in the form of paranoia about my writing style, which half of my brain has decided has deteriorated over the last few months. It was never brilliant but I thought that it was at least improving. I had at least interesting ideas, regardless of my execution.

 And maybe this is just due to a lack of sufficient sleep, but I can’t help but think that sentences like:

 

-             For perhaps a week or even approaching two he did not dream, or if he did it was only of blackness and indistinguishable from dreamlessness.

Or:

-             A new moon night with the stars ripped away

even, are a lot better than what I have come up with in the last few weeks:

-             He hung suspended in the water. Very slowly something was leaving him. He turned incrementally without noise until he was facedown and his unblinking eyes stared at the blackness. Something was leaving him.

Or maybe:

-             And on that ocean floor something was growing in its gut and along its spine but it was not the same something that had left. It gripped dead muscle and it crept along nerves and it slunk through bloodstream to the heart.

But then again I do like the rhythm of:

-             His lungs were salted, his blood rusted, he drifted downwards.

Though it isn’t so very interesting.

Possibly I have drunk too much vinegar and now have a headache; certainly I feel very strange.

|||

Two days later and I haven’t really done the work. Watched a lot more W1A and the last episode of Doctor Who (was on the phone to my sister when it was on) and just now this weeks’. I’m fully getting into it, which is quite fun; it’s growing into itself as well. Episodes getting better and better each week.

I sobbed for the last third or so of Demons of the Punjabi. Surprised myself about it; I cry easily but do not normally get very invested in TV. This week’s episode wasn’t nearly as emotional, but it was definitely the best narratively speaking so far, and it was way too intense for an episode entitled Kerblam!

Anyway – fin.

nause: me on a kayak, but not yet in the water! (Default)
 Very odd to be typing this. Because nobody is going to read it. Yelling into a void is just very strange, but if I get it all out in words then maybe I’ll stop driving everyone insane by pacing about all day. I should be doing work but I don’t want to. This year is heading in the same direction as 2016/early 2017: a sustained breakdown. I should be doing work but I’m not even though sans pressure and stress it would be interesting work to do.

                  So instead I am yelling into a void about very little. I am feeling too drained to be much amused, but I do think that it is amusing. At least I have the cat.

                  At current I am thinking about:

-        Guilt: I feel very guilty whenever spending money on anything at all, and I’m not sure if this is dysfunctional or if it is all that will keep me from ending up in debt, what with my poor impulse control.

-        All You Have To Do Is Open Your Eyes by torakowalski: specifically, the sentence construction. For example: ‘The centre of his chest feels like someone just punched it hollow.’ Which is in character narration as well as evocative and emotive. Also: ‘Alvarez goes down to his knees like a hanged man after the rope’s been cut’, which again is emotive without being flowery. The paragraphs are also very minimal in this fic. I am starting to become paranoid about my paragraph length.

-        Whether or not I think the Doctor was wrong re the spider death in episode 4. Not that American douche (everyone on tumblr seems convinced that he is a too obvious Trump metaphor. I am not sure he is supposed to be so specific. He’s a representation of questionable American values and cultures, but that isn’t quite the same.) was going about it in the best manner possible, but surely it is more humane to put the spider out of its misery rather than let it die slowly and painfully and fearfully, which is the worst thing.

-        Connected to this, I am thinking about why the pain of animals is so acutely distressing, much more so than the pain of adult humans. Maybe because animals feel fear in an uncomplicated, pure sort of way. Nothing else but complete utter fear. Or maybe because they seem helpless in a way that human adults don’t often appear. Like children, infants, babies.

-        The fact that over my adolescence my career/life goals have gone roughly from writer to editor to something in the public sector maybe? to become a hermit in north Scotland.

-        Vera is clearly superior to Lewis, fight me.

-        Shirley Jackson seems to be on the up, what with this Netflix miniseries and all. I don’t have Netflix but I’m sure it has been handled well. I am very smug that I discovered her before all this renewed interest, even though she isn’t all that obscure.

-        Brighton Rock, by Graham Greene: specifically, the way in which this is worded: ‘Pain happened to him’. It’s very interesting. Overall though I am not as invested as I should be, half way though the book and all. Also I am fed up of Greene going on about Ida’s breasts. I get it. They are large. She has vitality. Please stop.

-        Candle in a Vacuum is now up to nearly 7000 words and this is terrifying. Individually each scene is… fine, but overall the pacing and tone is a problem. I’m not sure enough about what I’m aiming for, that’s the biggest problem. But I’m very proud, just of the fact that I am writing at all.

-        Peak 2018 ‘nause is writing: ‘For perhaps a week or even approaching two he did not dream, or if he did it was only of blackness and indistinguishable from dreamlessness.’ and fully embracing it. Post irony etc.

-       will hbomb ever upload again? The defining question of our time…


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