foxinthestars

Okay, that fic I said I had drafted last week --- I think I've done what I can do with it on my own and it's time to ask for (an)other pair(s) of eyes.

The basics:

Word Count: About 10k
Fandom: Akatsuki no Yona --- but the story also heavily involves mental health issues so if someone would be willing to look at it from that angle, I would appreciate it, canon knowledge or no.
Rating: T, I think. (see draft tags for more info)
Desired Harshness: Honest but Gentle; I'm serious about this but I'm also super self-conscious and socially anxious. Framing suggestions as "I" statements seems to help.

The details:

( Draft tags and summary under the cut )

Sometimes the internet is good for hauling up those half-remembered fragments of my youth and putting them on YouTube. Well, DailyMotion in this case:

The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man by David Attenborough

( Link and Thoughts under the cut )

Yesterday, I finished a draft of a fanfic!

YAY!

Next steps involve canon review and searching for betas.

EEK!

( More about writing anxieties... )

Lately I've been getting back more into anime (at the expense of my previous Zelda-induced swing toward video games but that's a whole other post), and I've been trying to watch like an episode or two per day.

Last season I just stockpiled Natsume Yuujinchou Go without watching it, but I have at last belatedly finished it. And I have to admit, I spent a lot of this season fighting the feeling that the magic was wearing thin. Some of the youkai encounters started to feel formulaic and pointless. There were places I could see them really padding out the manga material to get an episode out of it and it felt poorly-paced. Then at some point in the season they aired the "Nyanko-sensei to Hajimete no Otsukai" OAD and that thing was just so clunky, easily the worst NY ep I've ever seen.  Let's have random children repeat an unfunny schtick! Let's lever in all the regular cast for no reason! (No, candy bars are not a reason.) The season on the whole was still Natsume Yuujinchou, though.  It had its share of misty moments, and I'm still on for Roku coming up.

This season I'm stockpiling Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu, waiting until I get around to re-watching season 1 so I can just watch the whole thing through.

The only current-run thing I am watching? Scum's Wish. Which was totally not on my radar going in, but I am a sucker for this kind of deep emotional exploration (even if I probably relate to it less than some because I'm some flavor of ace and sure as heck never experienced this s**t in high school). I also frankly love how this series is an example of how to do sexual material without being exploitative; the sexual content is relatively heavy (the very first episode shows tongue-kissing and nearly-naked groping and things spiral from there), but the sex scenes in this show are not there to make you hot, they are there to make you cry. That is, the sexual content isn't there to instrumentalize the characters for the viewer in a sexual way but to create intense empathy for the characters' messy and complicated motives. I haven't gotten to watching the latest episode just yet, though. I sort of want to be in the mood for this one.

Something that was on my radar going in was Little Witch Academia, because I did enjoy the original short film but, um. I didn't even get to the TV series; I went to catch up and broke down 10 minutes into the second movie. Turns out the heroine is just too noisy and treads too heavily on my vicarious embarrassment squick to deal with her for more than 26 minutes.  (Adding a funny fat character didn't help, either.)  Well, I'll always have that first film...

And I tried the first episode of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid and was like "this is fine and all but not worth the energy to stick with." That's a high bar for me these days.

In back-catalog, now that I'm through NY5 I've started on Mawaru Penguindrum, which I've never seen before. From what I hear, I should probably get though it before attempting to say much. (Except perhaps, "He made this in between Utena and Yuri Kuma Arashi? Yeah, I see it.")

Once that's done, I intend to re-watch Uchouten Kazoku to get myself ready for the new season.

Apparently I'm in the mood to blabber about writing issues.

( Fox re-reads old stuff, feels vaguely wistful, thinks about how to get writing done )

One thing that's been really helpful for me getting writing done is social support. During this past Yuletide, ahavah invited me to a Chatzy she runs where they do online write-ins:

Write Now! WonderCabin (no registration required)

So if any of you want to come and write with me, the current write-in times (US Central) are 7-9 pm on Mondays and 10 am - noon on Fridays. I'm looking into scheduling another one, too (probably Wednesday or Thursday at 10 am or 7 pm --- please speak up if you want to come and have a preference).

Thank you for signing up for the artfeverfest exchange and thank you for making a pretty picture for me! I hope you have fun!

( Requests for Akatsuki no Yona, Legend of Zelda, MST3K, Castlevania, Kemono no Souja Erin, Psychic Force, Natsume Yuujinchou )

Netflix is making a Castlevania animated series.  FOR REAL.

Let me just copy/paste what I said to my sister on Facebook, because it pretty much covers it:

"I tend to get territorial and pessimistic about these things, so I admit I'm bracing myself like "this is going to be hard for me to watch" --- but at the same time it's great to see CV getting this kind of spotlight. What I've heard sounds like it's a labor of love, and I respect that whether it's hard on my fannish territory issues or not."

I've been hearing inner whispers that I should draw lately, so I'm looking at the artfeverfest exchange.  I'm working on figuring out my nominations, and if the final tagset isn't too arid w/r/t stuff I'm into, I'll sign up.

(I don't think it's Yuletide's fault that I have a tendency to fall for small-fandom stuff...)

While trying to thin out the books on my shelves, I ran across my copy of Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws by Kate Bornstein. And I opened it up thinking "Hm, should I keep this?"

YES I SHOULD TOTALLY KEEP IT.

If I had more money, I would also give it away because I think I should do that, too. (I don't have the money, though, sorry.)

Little by little, over several days, I worked my way through this roundtable discussion on collective resistance in sci-fi/fantasy. It's very much worth the read.