subverting the text

✦ AO3 is running the April Showers Challenge where every day they focus on a different fandom and invite people to come upload their work. :) Any fandom is welcome, definitely, not just the ones being highlighted. Come preserve your fanworks with us! Now is a great time, since AO3 user subscriptions have arrived! ♥

April 12th is Final Fantasy day! I found three things I wasn't embarrassed by to upload (score!). I have a few invites if anyone needs them, just let me know. <3 There is another fandom close to my heart coming up soon and I am ridiculously excited. :D

✦ Inception Kink Fest happened and I basically missed it! THAT'S OKAY, I GUESS, THANKS FOR NOTHING UNIVERSITY. I have learned a lot about kink...just reading the master list. :D Inception fandom has single-handedly doubled the kinks I apparently enjoy? Self-knowledge is awesome. There's SO MUCH...and my to-read tag is insane (I really hope I am not the only person who has one of these that's over 500). I'll catch up...in June? At which point there will still be two months unaccounted for. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH A FANDOM THIS LARGE/ACTIVE. /o\

✦ I am considering an ereader for fic purposes (and possibly school book purposes for next semester, ugh I hate reading hard copy with a passion which is going to make my American Indian class super interesting). This is possibly the most self-indulgent purchase I've considered for myself in years, but I am going back to work soon and would really like to just have a bunch of reading material available on a device bigger than my iPhone screen. I don't want a Kindle, and I need something that can read .html and .pdf files and one that could do the files that AO3 exports works in would be great, too. Does anyone have any suggestions?

✦ ( blah blah school paper topic, tears, etc. )

So I am sorry if I am not around very much or suddenly vanish when I am. :( I am best catchable on bottle.of.shine@gmail.com on Gtalk, though, if you need me for something (I HAVE SO MANY PROJECTS) or Tom Hardy suddenly acquires a Twitter account and you need me for EMERGENCY FLAILING. SOMEONE BETTER ALERT ME IF THAT HAPPENS, I AM NOT KIDDING.

✦ Spanish exam today where the professor seriously put questions on the test from a story he didn't even give us. :| My blood pressure!

✦ I AM BORING, SORRY. I want to be writing, not studying, but there's only three more weeks. Then: no much writing! SO MUCH.

I like how I don't realize these things until someone points them out. ._.

Curious, I looked up all the humanoid main-party characters in the main-series games from Final Fantasy IV to Final Fantasy XII, disregarding characters such as Fran, who is more than fifty years old but looks much younger on account of not being human.

The ages of the male characters ranged from five to seventy.

The ages of the female characters ranged from five to twenty-two. Source.

ALSO, AHHHHHH

Because I have it.

I think justira mentioned this to me back when it occurred and it didn't stick, from ff_press, Biggest FF community closed. Someone else irked! I am not the only one.

Like I said to heebee, I just find things like this, when done by moderators of huge communities (I am assuming that it was the moderators and not Livejournal which might be a mistake, but I am making it), it's just mean spirited and short-sighted. Any community, even defunct, has value to our fandom as a culture. It's our past, our fun and our experiences in posts and threads and comments and to delete something that was built on joint effort seems to me the antithesis of what fandom is about.

Although I readily admit that I have weird ideas about history. Comes with being a historian. A quirk, let's say.

To sum up:

» I played about two hours of Final Fantasy XIII today. ( minor spoilers about some boss/other battles )

» The Final Fantasy Big Bang will be called Mega Flare! The end! I am not sure I promoted this when it was in the initial stages, but now that the follow-up post is ready I will start shaking my pom-poms! I am ridiculously excited about the story I am writing and have been sketching tons of ideas and already stressing about how to subtly integrate sexy times so I am not BANISHED FROM THE HEARTS of my S/Z pals. If I have time this summer I am definitely going to do some replaying. I know our fandoms don't produce tons of long fic in one go, but I don't read chaptered fic at all anymore! I am greedy and I admit it! I love the idea of it enough that I somehow managed to convince owlmoose that it would be an excellent idea to co-mod, so hey! Even if she didn't like the title Phoenix Rising. *g*

» Oh man, I have so many great comments on my last post. <3 I am still considering some of the replies. It turned into session on writing well, which wasn't really my intention, but is useful. :D I am really concerned with character growth lately! Maybe it's all this analyzation I'm doing of text. Six years of close reading video games and some books have produced a canon source nerd! Why yes, I believe I will take various lines from the game and use them as a basis for an epic story in which Seifer and Zell are inadvertently attached at the mind—with a happy ending! I am a pairing nerd, oh well! At least I own it.

» I think I am thinking more about relationships because in my novel course, we're just about to wrap up The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. I really enjoyed this book. I need to do a close reading response over it, although I haven't decided a topic yet. I feel like doing something over space — the space between people physically, emotionally and mentally. Space plays a really important role — between people and God! However, my thoughts have not yet pooled into something I can get a thesis from, although I can think of plenty of evidence. *g* Maybe some spoilers in this and maybe not, but I tried to keep it vague. ( Some thoughts about The End of the Affair )

I might read Graham Green again, although I am glad that our next novel is White Teeth and by a woman. Honestly? I really wish that this professor taught Women Writers, I would be all up in that. However, I am fairly sure another professor has that claimed, and I've taken her from Intro to Fiction and she bores me and never liked any of my awesome ideas. Alas, alas.

» You Belong With Me. Now with more gay! from feministing. Now, I am not Taylor Swift fan (nor am I an apologist — damn, she SURELY has people around her that could say, "Hey, maybe singing a sing that plays into tired sexist stereotypes isn't so great!"), but when you frame this song like this I am...well, I am not crazy about the lyrics because the other girl is still getting short shrift, but what can you do.

Honestly, the first time I watched this I just sat, gaping. Then I watched it again and again and again. Sometimes people wonder why I am a slasher, and this video, the bit on the park bench? WELL THAT RATHER SUMS IT UP FOR ME OKAY. I will underline that moment right there, that tenderness, when for my entire childhood the dudes were defined by how hard they could hit shit (girls included!). Ha ha, apparently I have a kink for the dudes to get in touch with their soft side. I am okay with this.

but where were the makeouts, she asks. D:

Meanwhile, dude, I want this as a YA novel! PLEASE GIVE. How many love stories between het couples take place between a girl and boy who live across from each other and can see into the room of the other? There is a void. It needs to be filled. Bonus if one of the boy/girls is a werewolf. Or a zombie. Lesbian werewolves YA. Someone write me that.

» Just in case you are not tired of me talking about it yet: Final Fantasy Exchange signups! Tell all your friends! I am seeing all these prompts and getting ridiculously excited. I am still considering my own and feel like raiding the Chocobo Down lists from the last two round. >.>

If you don't feel confident enough to be locked into exchanging, there's always signing up to be a pinch-hitter, which is a no-obligation way to get the chance to create a gift, if a prompt goes out you like (you get to see it before you claim it!). Pinch hitters are incredibly important, and we learned that lesson last round, so if you feel like just signing up on the chance that something you might feel strongly about might come up, join us! There's also Moogle Fluff, which is a really low-pressure way to get involved at the end of the exchange, no sign-ups required. :D Lots of ways to take part! *waves FFEX flag* Seriously, it's going to be a great round and we'd love to have everyone!

» I am both excited and concerned about the possibility of a A Wrinkle in Time adaptation (I never saw the TV series). I feel like this would be a really, really hard movie to pull off well, without making it a big spectacle (especially during the climax). Also, the comments point out it might get the same hack treatment The Golden Compass did (boo hiss) and that's always a concern. But, oh, the kid in me who read these books yearns for a good film adaptation. Seriously, so much of my identity right now is tied up in the second book, A Wind in the Door, the Echthroi, Naming, Unnaming, and A Wrinkle in Time started it all. How many times did I check that book out from the elementary library I will never, ever know.

» "The Test" (Star Trek, reboot + TOS) is a vid I got linked to through my network. I don't watch a lot of vids; the format does less for me than fic or art. Okay, okay, and also the culture makes me feel really dumb because vidders are doing really fascinating things with language and imagery and technique that forms this mass of AWESOME that is so very hard for me to untangle unless what the creator is doing operates by reaching out and punching me in the nose. I'm sorry! I am not enlightened about vids. I accept recs for really great vids for People Who Are Vid Dumb. This one, though, this one I get, and oh, man, that ending! I have never watched one episode of TOS but the ending to this gave me chills.

I spent six hours? seven? prepping ff_exchange documents so signups could be open today and people could start helping us promote (really, because we totally forgot about promoting so um, pretty please?). In totally expected news, we didn't actually get any less tl;dr, but it was easier to post the sign-ups and link to all our documentation for people who felt they might need it instead of spamming friends lists with a bunch of entries with mounds of text. FFEX: open for business! Go sign up. Bring your friends. The deadline to sign up is June 19th.

Last time I took part I wrote a 17,000 word story. So maybe let's not do that this round. Sev is promising possible extra Chocobo Down for advertising and bringing friends into the fold! We can't pass up that offer, even if it means me having to wait even longer for Seifer/Irvine rockstar AU. *tears*