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Update? I hope everybody's enjoying the beginning of spring.
There's been some sad news for me recently, which I may get into at a later point if I feel like I need to, and I've suddenly had reason to get a little more stressed than usual about money ( D: ) but for the most part I'm good, just doing pretty terribly at managing time lately. As usually happens before I get into the swing of working again, I am pretty much bouncing off the walls in frustration at my lack of time/motivation for writing. I don't know how the hell there are teachers who write novels or even the more than occasional fanfic in their spare time because just from doing rubric scoring all day long, I get home and I just want to watch TV or something. I don't really feel mentally exhausted while I'm there, but my attention span is totally killed by the end of the day. The more frustrating (and yet partly positive) thing is how that little ten percent of the time my mind is able to wander at work is like...plot-bunnies-on-meth time. So I have all this story figured out and less time to write it and ugh.
On the fanfic front, In Our Nature remains a very high priority, and in fact I recently finally managed to get through a decent draft of a series of scenes in that fic that were giving me so much trouble; Sara knew I'd been banging my head against a wall over it for like two months so we actually went out for dinner to celebrate my pathetically slow achievement, har har. Just imagine how drunk I'm gonna get when the entire fic is actually finished (which I'm sure will be kind of a weirdly bittersweet time for me).
Also polishing up something for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
smallfandombang, and somehow managing to juggle some enthusiasm for too many different fandoms at once. When did my fanfic life become tiny book fandoms + Star Trek is what I would like to know. Eheh.
A random fandom thing I was thinking on lately: Not that I would necessarily be brave enough to participate, but for real though, has anybody ever tried to make a longer-length fic exchange work? Like a gift fic community where the minimum is basically big bang length instead of the usual thousand? I guess presumably it's too much pressure for something you're writing for someone else, but at the same time, there are always some ambitiously plotty fics that come out of fandom exchanges from a few people. Sadly this would not seem to be the time to test anything like that anyway; yuletide only seems to grow, but aside from that, it looks like it's hard to promote new fic challenges lately, and some of the older ones get smaller and smaller :/
For once this year I am actually keeping up with shows as they air (wow) though I can't say I've been super pumped about any of them either. Teen Wolf has been boring as hell to me for the most part, like it's less and less the fun kind of bad and just the bad kind of bad; I may be in the minority of even the guilty-pleasure fans for the fact that the only time I was ever anything like hooked was the latter part of S1/early S2. From then on it's just been the occasional cool horror sequence (actual werewolf fights notwithstanding because those usually just look cheesy) and the eye candy that keeps me watching. Even my Stilinski family feels aren't quite saving it anymore. I didn't see the last ep but I can't see why I wouldn't be just as pissed about it as others are once I do (and they were doing relatively well with the lady characters this past season, as in keeping them significant and instrumental characters even when they were only vaguely still in the status of romantic interests and just...WTF).
I kept up with Sleepy Hollow all the way through the first season but after a point Sara and I would just get really punchy making fun of how conveniently full of information Ichabod manages to be in every episode; he's a very endearing character but not exactly my type of well-rounded, which is too bad, because I find Abbie Mills to be a great protagonist. It's a fun show, and for how relatively well it does with representation (points off for potentially disrespectful use of Native American folklore) I would be happy to tell everyone I knew to watch it if only it were something more than entertaining.
Almost Human I was actually a lot happier with, despite it being very case-of-the-week procedural which can usually bore me pretty fast. Aside from maybe a couple episodes that just felt kind of silly, I was pretty entertained by how many ways the crime and sci-fi elements interacted (I would be lying if I said I didn't once again contemplate revisiting the Counterfeits 'verse several times when I was watching it). And the not-so-subtle Blade Runner homages are...cute. Sadly the show is kind of a yawn-fest with some of its secondary characters; Stahl has this flat, perpetually half-smiling presence that makes me feel like she's in a commercial for something, and Lili Taylor somehow isn't that credible in her role, though her character was finally beginning to grow on me at the end of the season (TBH I've never been much of a fan of her, even though I do love the movie Dogfight, so maybe it was always going to be a hard sell.)
And now that season 2 of The Americans is underway I remember what it's like to actually get to the end of the episode and wish it was longer! - I just keep getting behind on it because the middle of my week is crazy. Though I don't have much in particular to say about it, I'm pretty excited about this season. I continue to enjoy the unpredictable mix of bluntness and subtlety in how the show handles everything. I keep meaning to hunt down other stuff Matthew Rhys has been in cause I enjoy him so much.
There's been some sad news for me recently, which I may get into at a later point if I feel like I need to, and I've suddenly had reason to get a little more stressed than usual about money ( D: ) but for the most part I'm good, just doing pretty terribly at managing time lately. As usually happens before I get into the swing of working again, I am pretty much bouncing off the walls in frustration at my lack of time/motivation for writing. I don't know how the hell there are teachers who write novels or even the more than occasional fanfic in their spare time because just from doing rubric scoring all day long, I get home and I just want to watch TV or something. I don't really feel mentally exhausted while I'm there, but my attention span is totally killed by the end of the day. The more frustrating (and yet partly positive) thing is how that little ten percent of the time my mind is able to wander at work is like...plot-bunnies-on-meth time. So I have all this story figured out and less time to write it and ugh.
On the fanfic front, In Our Nature remains a very high priority, and in fact I recently finally managed to get through a decent draft of a series of scenes in that fic that were giving me so much trouble; Sara knew I'd been banging my head against a wall over it for like two months so we actually went out for dinner to celebrate my pathetically slow achievement, har har. Just imagine how drunk I'm gonna get when the entire fic is actually finished (which I'm sure will be kind of a weirdly bittersweet time for me).
Also polishing up something for
smallfandombang, and somehow managing to juggle some enthusiasm for too many different fandoms at once. When did my fanfic life become tiny book fandoms + Star Trek is what I would like to know. Eheh.A random fandom thing I was thinking on lately: Not that I would necessarily be brave enough to participate, but for real though, has anybody ever tried to make a longer-length fic exchange work? Like a gift fic community where the minimum is basically big bang length instead of the usual thousand? I guess presumably it's too much pressure for something you're writing for someone else, but at the same time, there are always some ambitiously plotty fics that come out of fandom exchanges from a few people. Sadly this would not seem to be the time to test anything like that anyway; yuletide only seems to grow, but aside from that, it looks like it's hard to promote new fic challenges lately, and some of the older ones get smaller and smaller :/
For once this year I am actually keeping up with shows as they air (wow) though I can't say I've been super pumped about any of them either. Teen Wolf has been boring as hell to me for the most part, like it's less and less the fun kind of bad and just the bad kind of bad; I may be in the minority of even the guilty-pleasure fans for the fact that the only time I was ever anything like hooked was the latter part of S1/early S2. From then on it's just been the occasional cool horror sequence (actual werewolf fights notwithstanding because those usually just look cheesy) and the eye candy that keeps me watching. Even my Stilinski family feels aren't quite saving it anymore. I didn't see the last ep but I can't see why I wouldn't be just as pissed about it as others are once I do (and they were doing relatively well with the lady characters this past season, as in keeping them significant and instrumental characters even when they were only vaguely still in the status of romantic interests and just...WTF).
I kept up with Sleepy Hollow all the way through the first season but after a point Sara and I would just get really punchy making fun of how conveniently full of information Ichabod manages to be in every episode; he's a very endearing character but not exactly my type of well-rounded, which is too bad, because I find Abbie Mills to be a great protagonist. It's a fun show, and for how relatively well it does with representation (points off for potentially disrespectful use of Native American folklore) I would be happy to tell everyone I knew to watch it if only it were something more than entertaining.
Almost Human I was actually a lot happier with, despite it being very case-of-the-week procedural which can usually bore me pretty fast. Aside from maybe a couple episodes that just felt kind of silly, I was pretty entertained by how many ways the crime and sci-fi elements interacted (I would be lying if I said I didn't once again contemplate revisiting the Counterfeits 'verse several times when I was watching it). And the not-so-subtle Blade Runner homages are...cute. Sadly the show is kind of a yawn-fest with some of its secondary characters; Stahl has this flat, perpetually half-smiling presence that makes me feel like she's in a commercial for something, and Lili Taylor somehow isn't that credible in her role, though her character was finally beginning to grow on me at the end of the season (TBH I've never been much of a fan of her, even though I do love the movie Dogfight, so maybe it was always going to be a hard sell.)
And now that season 2 of The Americans is underway I remember what it's like to actually get to the end of the episode and wish it was longer! - I just keep getting behind on it because the middle of my week is crazy. Though I don't have much in particular to say about it, I'm pretty excited about this season. I continue to enjoy the unpredictable mix of bluntness and subtlety in how the show handles everything. I keep meaning to hunt down other stuff Matthew Rhys has been in cause I enjoy him so much.
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