half-real worlds of paper and ink

January
Blackout by Connie Willis
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Ok. So. I now have an account at Pinboard (username: yati), though I imported my bookmarks from Delicious as private so there's nothing to see there. I'll probably make them public one of these days. And while I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that Delicious will (eventually) get all its old functionality back up, I think I'll be using Pinboard as my primary bookmarking site for now. I do like Pinboard a lot, mostly because it lets you save your bookmarks as private by default. I had to use Greasemonkey to modify the CSS, though -- the link colours and the line-spacing made me twitch.

I also deleted my Google+ account as well as my Google profile, mostly because I couldn't agree with its real names policy. None of its services that I currently use needs a user profile, so I'm content with that.

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Where I am when I disappear: mostly at work. I was hoping that things were going to settle down, but now it's beginning to look that this running about in a panic is going to be the norm.

From here and there in my circle and my network, from the NPR list here. Bold if you've read, italicize ones you fully intend to read, underline if it's a book/series you've read part but not all of.


( Top 100? Really? )

It's a pretty odd list.

I meant to do this each week, in groups of sevens, but I . . . just kept getting too mired in other things? So here it is, at the end of the Three Weeks celebration -- I think it's a good introductory thing especially with all the folks from the subscription memes around. Hello!


1. Why did you sign up for Dreamwidth?
Mostly I've been disillusioned by LiveJournal by the time, and afuna had talked a bit about Dreamwidth in her journal. I was curious, so I came along to see what it was like, and enjoyed being here, so I decided to stay. :D It's also thanks to afuna that I got an invite before open beta started. I converted my account to a paid account almost immediately after payment options were available, and I'm happy to report I love it here still.

2. Why did you choose your journal name?
It's my name. :) A diminutive of my legal name, and it's what people in real life actually call me. It's a pretty common Malay girl's name; there was always another Yati in my year when I was at school.

( another 19 questions under the cut )

I posted my ff_exchange fic with four hours to spare! >.>

To clarify, that is actually Not a Good Thing, mostly because of my perfectionist tendencies. I usually reread fics multiple times before posting, often after setting it aside for a couple of days, and this one didn't get the same treatment. I finished writing it around seven hours before the deadline, and spent the rest of the time polishing it and going /o\ at how I keep thinking it's perfectly adequate, but not great. The last month has been somewhat stressful and I've had too many things on my mind (god it's been so, so hard to concentrate on anything) and I've been writing the fic in a rather distracted fashion, not quite knowing what I really wanted to do with it.

Also this is the first fic I've written since last year's exchange (yes, this very same Doink! Final Fantasy Exchange) and I am so out of practice. It's alarming that it's becoming a pattern -- the last three things I wrote were all for Doink! and the only reason I finished those fics is because I committed myself when I signed up and I dislike the thought of defaulting. Perhaps the solution to this is to go join more challenges, but I'm afraid the persistent anxiety of wanting to please the recipient will kill me. I've always been more worried whether or not someone will like what I wrote for them more than anything else when it comes to fic exchanges. Deadlines and word counts don't particularly scare me, even though I've been known to use the latter as an excuse.

But it's done now, and posted, and I'm crossing my fingers hoping that the recipient will like it! Reveals are in less than a week.


Also: Moogle Fluff is open and you can participate even if you didn't sign up for the exchange!


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Anyway. Between posting and riffling through folders with names that were mostly incomprehensible, I found a number of WIPs and ficlets and lines of dialogue from goodness knows when from a few different fandoms. I'm slowly sorting through these and trying to figure out what's worth continuing and finishing, and what should be considered as lost causes. There's one longish FFVIII fic -- more like a collection of scenes, rather -- that's been around for ages; it seems like the problem with it is I don't know whether or not I should break Squall and Rinoa up. (I think it was originally written for a challenge to "subvert your OTP" or some such thing; the notes to it are too vague for me to figure it out now.)

There's a Danny Phantom fic that's too angsty and has no resolution. There's a FFX/FFVIII crossover that's messy and convoluted, but I like the ideas in it even though I don't know which direction it's supposed to go now.

. . . I was quite surprised by some of these. A sort of bemused "I wrote that?" more than anything, especially when I realised that I had laughed while I was reading some of these things, and I wrote those and I have always been so critical of my own writing. I'm not even sure I can write like that any more.

So. Three weeks for Dreamwidth is back! Lots of activities going on at three_weeks_for_dw. There seems to be memes of Frequently (or Not So Frequently) Asked Questions About [Stuff], with [Stuff] being anything from fandom to science to Wales, and it looks pretty interesting!

Other things of interest:
-- Small Fandoms Subscription Meme -- the entry for The Lymond Chronicles is here (shut up, you knew that was coming)
-- a Feedback Fest -- a comment rec fest, reccing anything from fic to art to crafts hosted on Dreamwidth.

Also a number of fandom-specific meme/activities going on. Excellent opportunity to meet new people, but new fandoms are scary. XD

Last year I said I was going to try to post more often. It didn't work out at all. I'm horrible at posting; if anything I'm getting worse. I think, somewhere in the last two years, I grew somewhat paranoid and somehow ended up convinced that things that I post must be interesting or intelligent that I ended up not posting at all. Ha ha. Who was I kidding. I should stop keeping my drafts in Google Docs and just edit them and post them here.

But anyway. 3W4DW. I'm not sure I can commit extensively to anything this time, my brain is a bit frozen with too many things being filed in, but if there's anything you'd like me to ramble about, just ask! Fandom, books, video games, television series that I am horribly behind, lopsided attempts at crafting, whatever comes to mind. I shall do my best.

Now I think I shall go around and subscribe to more people. Hello!

I spent three days and two nights on Redang Island with my sister, a sort of a treat to myself. As far as vacations go, it wasn't much of one -- it rained a bit too much.

( cut for blather and photos )

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Also I am watching the new Doctor Who trailer for series 6 and I am ridiculously excited about it. It's a strange feeling -- I've never been particularly excited about television before; I'm mostly blasé about the whole thing and will only get to watching stuff ages after everyone else.

I am mostly just flailing around, trying to figure out how is it that everything seems to be spinning out of control.

I feel like throwing things and slamming doors. I'm not. Instead I'm cleaning up the house and wondering whether I should mop the floor. I don't even know what it is I am angry about. The car, yes, sure; I'd definitely feel better if it gets fixed faster and I have an actual mode of transport instead of looking pathetic and asking people to pick me up and drop me off. (That's part of the problem, see -- I've never liked asking for help, even when I know I need to, even when I know it would be better if I did.)

There's work tomorrow. I'll get there fine. There are cabs, buses, trains, little sisters. (None of them particularly accessible, but hey, a girl has to make do.) There are friends who are unspeakably awesome who don't mind having me underfoot for a week (and apparently for a couple more days. arianur is a superhero). This is not a ridiculous place to live -- it's the office that's a ridiculous place to work. It's in the middle of nowhere and I live way too far from it.

Just thinking about work is making me go :|. Maybe it's the long break. Going back to checking pages and scrutinising sentences doesn't appeal much after staying home for a while and reading fic and watching unhealthy amounts of television.

The problem with the last few months is not not having things to write about, it's getting organised enough to actually sit down and write. My head's a mess -- I'm thinking about too many things at one time and I wake up in the morning trying to sort out my dreams. I have various drafts about various things scattered about, mostly in a document in Google docs, and some notes written in the margin of my notebook, and half-hearted scribbles over the inevitable printed-on-one-side proofs that come to my desk in the office, but none of these actually help. I can't work myself up into writing actual, decent, coherent sentences about anything.

I've never been an impulsive poster. I tend to loosely draft things and keep them for a while, and sometimes (most times) after a while it feels like the draft has become irrelevant, or too distant from what I am thinking now, so I just discard it. I start again, and go through the whole process again. Vicious cycle, that. I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing -- the internet doesn't really want me to rehash something someone much more eloquent has already said -- but it does cause some concern to some people that they start poking me just to see whether I'm still alive. XD

I am, I am. I just go hibernate for a while, sometimes.



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Things I keep thinking I might post about: books, sewing projects, getting people hooked on Doctor Who (my littlest sister went through the whole of series 5 in two days, and I like to think she liked it), movies that I will never watch.

We'll see.

Ahaha. I had always thought that "punch drunk" was a weird idiom, because how does one get drunk from punch? (Unless it's spiked, I suppose.) It never occurred to me in meant being, you know, punched in the face and ending up dizzy and concussed and all. It's one of those things that never made it to my "look it up in the dictionary" lists.

I eventually did look it up because it was in a fic, and the line went something like "he was literally punch drunk" and I was frowning at that line wondering how it could be literal.

The perils of English as a second language, I suppose. XD