Bright End of Nowhere

1. I was browsing Tumblr awhile ago and came across a Bioware Confession that said that the poster would wish to cast the actress who played Maria Hill in The Avengers as Commander Shepard in a theoretical live-action film. I really can't unsee it now.

2. Seeding a Pandora station with Two Steps from Hell, Florence + the Machine, and Matthew Good (Band) really confuses the genome.

3. I have officially given up any and all pretense of actually being in control of writing this fic. It is going to be infinity words long because Commander Mouthy has Opinions. Christ, I'm going to need to go Make Friends or something to find a beta for this eventually. Assuming I can actually weave this narrative.

3a. Not that I really care if anyone other than me is willing to read it. I'm not just turning left here, I've changed phases and am throwing around complex vectors.

3b. "Fanon conventions, what fanon conventions?" This is me, ignoring, ignorant, or blatantly throwing out fanon Because I Can.

3c. Again, goddamn you and your Take A Third Option tendencies. There wasn't supposed to be a Third Option! Although you did jack the Epic level past 11.

4. Finally built a Lego set I've had around for about 3 years. I never realized safety orange and black were Bad Guy colors. Now the only set I have left to build is the space police one with the criminals looking like Ood, only more Cthulhu-y.

5. I suddenly have the oddest craving for scones.

After an off-hand comment by a friend while I was describing some of the plotlines in xaos, I decided to excise any last messianic archetypes lingering on the character of Ashura, and in the process fixed about 5 gaping plot holes. (See Also: I was a fucking moron age 13-17.) So I found myself today tooling on the xaos Master Doc (my handy bible of critical information for this 'verse). I've been working on this document on and off for the past 4 years, and I keep telling myself that once it's in decent shape, then I'll start writing. I'm starting to wonder if this is a mistake, though. Because the more I think about it, the more this story has been mutating and growing in new and interesting ways. And I can't possibly document all of them without, you know, actually writing the story.

I'm wondering if maybe the Master Doc is just an excuse. Because the characters are starting to talk now, and if I don't take advantage of that, maybe I'll end up waiting another 5 years.

I dunno. I had so much trouble with this the first time around because I didn't have an outline and then wrote myself into a stupid corner. And so I decided that I would have an outline this time around, but now the "try to make an outline" thing is utterly failing because the outline keeps changing (or doesn't even exist), and maybe I'm wondering if I should just give up and sketch out notes on how the universe works and then let the characters go.

By the way, it's ridiculous how much I cannot know about characters I designed twelve years ago. At least I now know why a certain character resisted all my attempts to pair her with a boy. (Seriously. TWELVE YEARS.)

Question for anyone reading: would you prefer I posted these things about original works (xaos, Wintermarch, "Taming Fenrir"-verse) under a filter? I'd kinda like to be able to toss snippets and plot ideas and background info around and have people critique them or offer their own ideas. (Or hit me with a clue-by-four when I need it)

1) I am dithering about Yuletide. I'm not convinced about my ability to be inspired enough to write anything to completion in a month. I don't even know what fandoms I'd request or offer. Mostly because I haven't looked at the list yet.

2) I made mushroom pasta for dinner. This makes me exceedingly content.

3) I considered going home for Thanksgiving, but before I could make a decision, the really good deal on tickets sold out, and I'm reluctant to pay $350+ for 48 hours home. Especially when I'm going home in a month and three days. I feel bad I got my mom's hopes up, but she said she totally understands and would have done the same thing. But I am Very Good at guilt. On the positive side, I don't have to deal with TSA four times in less than 2 weeks.

But I'm seeing who else in the area is a Thanksgiving orphan and semi-hosting a Thing. Although I'm itching to make a beef tenderloin or leg of lamb instead of a turkey.

4) A friend of mine showed me a video last night that has since become the craziest earworm EVER: The Complete History of the Soviet Union, Through the Eyes of a Humble Worker, Arranged to the Melody of Tetris

YOU'RE WELCOME.

5) Another reason I'm dithering on Yuletide is that I should probably spend my energy generating ideas and the basic plot structures for this tenday I'm writing. I haven't had to work my gamewriting chops this hard since Centauri, and in terms of writing, I'd say Synchronicity (our tentative title) is a level above at least. Oh god, this thing is going to be crazy. Hopefully also awesome. If we're really good, it'll be crazy awesome.

6) This is having no mention of the crazy 'gateverse AU that popped into my head today and that abyssinia4077 has, of course, totally encouraged. I blame Darker than BLACK, actually.

Because it's 1am and I'm not asleep yet.

I'm going to try something here. This is a list of all WiPs I'm theoretically working on. I'm in such a weird headspace right now that I need a push to finish them. So. Here are summaries from what are technically active. As teasers, yes, but as also maybe I'll be motivated if someone kicks me into writing it.

If nothing else, hey, at least I know what I'm theoretically working on.

ETA: Aby reminded me I'm missing one.

( I graduate from college, and turn into a demotivated slacker. Who knew? )

*tilts head*

I seem to have A Thing for creating "exceedingly reluctant rulers". You know, when they find out a fief/kingdom/planet wants to make them ruler after they've been raised away from it, they keep trying to figure out how to give it back. Crown = Do Not Want.

Amusingly, both of them are female, in systems that rely on first-born inheritance, regardless of gender. Oh boy, I have A Thing. (Yes, Ashura, I am talking about you, however did you guess? You just got company in this category.)

In other, non-original fic news, I wish this apocafic I'm plotting would grow the rest of its plot. I'm so going to be tapped out of crazy Gnostic traditions, various mythologies, and legends really damn soon at this rate. Because I had the brilliant idea of adding a tenday on top of plotting the aforementioned P3/P4 apocafic. Why is the tenday add to that load? Because the last time I wrote a tenday, every corporate research project in game was organized via mythological tradition by company (one named all their projects after Norse, another from really esoteric Jewish tradition, etc).

I am insane.

Note to Self: in the future, do not sign up for or run a ficathon with a due date within 2 weeks of the release date of the game you have been waiting years for. You're so not going to want to write. You dumbass.

In other news, 36_stratagems is live! It even has people posting! You all should go read stories. And hopefully my fic will soon join them (I just need to write 3.5 more scenes!).

To be fair, P3P hasn't eaten all of my time. The rest has been eaten up by helping a team of frosh in Guild Camp as a zampolit, and coming up with ideas for a SMT-style apocalyptic tenday that I swear I'm not writing.

1) No, I haven't forgotten about those prompts I asked for a few weeks ago. I've just been ridiculously hosed. I'll get to them eventually.

2) Short story is now in the revision stage. I'm not entirely sure what I'll change, though. There are some parts that are bugging me, but no one dinged me on them, so I'm uncertain whether or not I should change them. Also, I clearly have been trained to write for writing LARPs or entire universes. I kind of stunned some people in the roundtable critique when asked to explain my universe's geopolitical situation. Apparently, not everyone comes up with 5 times the amount of information that actually appears in the story?

3) As if I don't have enough to do, I'm poking at the idea of running a tabletop involving time travel. Possibly in GURPS, which I've never used before. Clearly, I am insane.

4) I was looking at my list of fic WIPs and am feeling the need to write again. And not just abyssinia4077's and my Fic of Doom. I do realize I have the crack!fic that's still languishing at 10K words, and still needs it's back 2/3s. And the fic Aby wants to kill me for. And...other things. It's just that I have no time and am out of the groove for writing SG-1 right now. I think it's because I've been drilling deep in original fic and into SMT/Persona mythos for both the game I'm writing and the tabletop I'm playing. Someone make me fannish again?

5) There is no five.

6) You know what I miss? Vacations and weekends. I swear to god, I haven't had a For Reals one in weeks. I also miss cooking. I think the last time I went to the grocery store is roughly, uh, 8 weeks ago? Sometime in September, when I forgot to eat dinner, got out of lab at midnight, and went to the 24-hour grocery store for material components to make a grilled cheese sandwich. TERM, WHY WILL YOU NOT END? Wait, no, don't end. Ending now would be painful.

Things Learned From Writing the Original Fic [Partial List]:

- "retool" apparently means "take the entire back 3/4ths, which includes the majority of the plot, and chuck it out the window"

- It's easier to write when you actually like what you're writing, and not just trying to finish the damn story.

- I can apparently write some really fucked up stuff (okay, we all knew this already)

- I amuse myself by including cultural appropriation in the other direction. (Because the Chinese-descended Emperor of the space-faring human race would could totally pick out Roman imagery because it looks cool and keeps those pesky Westerners happy.)

-- Okay, that might be the history of anime-watching influencing my brain.

- I never want to write in Word again. I loves you, LaTeX!

First off, thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday on Tuesday. I tried to respond in whatever entries on LJ or DW or IMs you expressed that in, but if I missed you, I'm sorry! It was a very low-key birthday, which is okay, because I had other stuff to deal with.

Second, I think I made it through this week on sheer willpower. You know it's bad when, by Wednesday, one of your teammates in a lab class look at you and ask if you're okay, and when you admit to being sleepy, pretty much shove you off to bed.

Thankfully, Monday is a Suicide Day holiday.

Third, I have approx. 1.5 weeks to write a short story for a class. I have the beginning! I have no idea where it's going, but the instructor seems to like it a lot, so...well, we'll go for it. The main character possibly best described at this point as "Fujioka Haruhi meets Shirogane Naoto, and filtered through Ultranos's brain. In space. With SPACE ROMANS. And the Awesome turned up to 11." (For those of you without the frame of reference, er, someone might describe her as "gender confused". This is incorrect. She's not confused, the rest of the universe is.)

ALL I CAN WRITE IS CRACK.

I might need to babble at someone over minor issues. Mostly to make sure things make sense as I'm hashing universe details out.

I think holdouttrout can attest, via evidence from today, that I Should Not Be Allowed to give hypothetical examples. Especially hypothetical examples to describe fiction genres, like crossover and fusion.

In other news, DELICIOUS, DELICIOUS CRACK FUSION IDEA. *cackles madly*