Any desire I may have had to read or watch New Moon has been successfully killed. From what I understand, the books only got worse from there on out.

Last post mostly stemmed from how disconnected I feel and not liking it. LJ's pretty much all I use right now but it's obviously not all there is, I hardly see some of you on LJ. But the one chatroom I knew about seems to have died. Specifically on my mind was not having a way to talk out writing problems, when other people seem to be doing so, somewhere, but mostly I just don't like feeling so isolated.

It seems people discuss in-progress writing, and I'm wondering what I'm missing. Wrong venue, or do I not post things right?

I remember reading in Stephen King's On Writing the idea that we all write for a "perfect reader." His is his wife. It made a lot of sense to me because that's exactly what I do, or did. For original fiction, my perfect reader is my mom. She's also my editor.

But I realized I don't have that for fanfic (either one). I've unconsciously fallen into thinking I did a few times, only to be disappointed. I've tried to distance myself from it, but doing that is not easy and feels unnatural. I think it's only normal to write with someone in mind. So who am I writing for? Does it matter?

Not that I've been writing. I've been doing a lot of thinking about writing the last few days, but I haven't been able to get myself to sit down and put words to anything. Part of the problem is that I'm going to feel guilty no matter what I work on, and I haven't really wanted to deal with that. I know people are waiting for the fanfic, but Silver has been sitting for so long that anyone who might have been following it has probably given up. As far as I can tell, anyway. But this is my baby and I need to finish it.

Not that I've been completely unproductive. I rediscovered the joys of velour and pastel dust, and impossible to open fixative cans. I can't even express how it feels to be able to draw again. I still have to be careful, but it's not making me want to curl up and weep afterwards.

Tomorrow I will get back on the writing. Though on what, I'm not sure.

It struck me last night that they'd talked to a couple cops a few chapters back. It wouldn't be too random to bring them back in .. .I think.

Any thoughts or ideas would be much appreciated, I'm still kinda floundering here. Though I suspect most people didn't follow my babbling. I know NaNo and other things are rather pressing.

I can't be the only one who thought the scene at the end of ep. 23 of Gluttony's large mouth/pseudo-Gate thing opening was obscene.

And May's voice ranks somewhere near the top of most annoying anime voices :P

Scholastic U.S. reverses decision to ban book

... In a letter sent to her publisher, Amulet Books, Scholastic’s book fairs division asked her to clean up the relatively mild language and to change the two same-sex parents to a straight couple. “The other issues [Scholastic had problems with] – words like ‘crap’ – just made me shake my head and laugh,” said Myracle. “But the idea that two moms could be problematic ... well, astonished would be the best way to describe my reaction.” ...

Now, why am I thinking that complaining about words like "crap" was a case of "we have to find something else to take issue with so we don't look quite so homophobic!"

Interestingly, Scholastic Canada didn't have an issue with the book.

I'm thinking Arakawa shouldn't tackle romance. The only ones that work are the ones that happened in the past - meaning we see the happy couple, not what led up to it. Trisha/Hohenheim, Izumi/Sig, Maes/Gracia - and Roy/Maes. The ones she's trying to do within the series - eehhhh.

I'm not saying this because I'm anti EdWin - most people have relationships that aren't good for them, teenagers are notorious for it - or anti Royai. Both of those would have been perfectly fine, except that she's mangled the characters in favor of the 'ship. I buy Winry's feelings for Ed, but Ed, damn it, falls out of character every time his supposed "feelings" show up, right from the first "Oh, she's cute when she's submissive" moment. Plus, whenever he comforts Winry, a prime moment to showcase hidden feelings, it's damn near identical to how he comforts Al. Which tells me that the affection he feels for Winry is more brotherly than anything else.

Royai gets a double blow. Roy treats her no differently than his other subordinates, which is actually a shame considering how long they've known each other. There's been no hint of deeper feelings on Roy's side, unless you also want to admit (even stronger) evidence for Roy/Havoc and - of course - Roy/Maes. Riza, poor thing, falls out of character and completely loses her edge, the prime example being her giving up once Lust tells her Roy is dead. The fact that the Royai shippers have been even worse than the yaoi shippers for reading in subtext every time they have two seconds together in a panel is pretty telling.

The only ongoing romance I can think of that's believable is Ross/Broche, and I'm starting to think it's because we don't ever see them.

Okay. Rant over.

I was looking through the library jobs listed on indeed.com and this came up under the "sponsored jobs" section:

Craigslist-like postings site for gay men dating

I guess they're looking for someone to handle the the digital libraries on their site.

Um, yeah. Not exactly what I'm looking for ^^;

These are all icons that people are free to use and redistribute. The other ones I have either use my artwork or were made by other people, but these were made by me and use either official art or doujinshi art (and one from an AMV). They're pretty much up for grabs so I thought I'd put them out there.

A short backstory to Silver, Worth, is up at Paper Demon. I'll deal with Elfwood later.

Silver's voice is always an interesting challenge to pin down. I don't think I've yet done it justice, quite, although no one would know that but me. He's the only character I have that pushing my vocabulary in that way, for most other characters I have to tone down the academia.

I ought to be working on the main story, of course, but it's still stuck in the what-happens-next problem. I was talking with my mom about it the other day, and she gave me some ideas to work with. I miss brainstorming like that. But it still comes down to figuring out what the various characters are going to do. And working around my narrator being locked in a room.

By the way, with Twitter, I'm going to assume the non-responses are because of non-interest, which means the majority of my f'list would not be interested in cross-posts. So Twitter will stay where it is. Which is here if anyone's interested. Not that I ever tweet anything profound, but it is turning out to be useful as a micro-blog.

Happy Halloween/Samhain everyone! Once again I'm pretty much doing nothing. I'm not at work today so there's no point in dressing up, and I just can't seem to be motivated to decorate. Have a fun night, though, people!

It really depends on my mood and the particular test whether I end up as an INFP or an INTP. Both descriptions usually fit.

On the second one, I found my lack of interpersonal intelligence amusing. 10%, wow XD

Ganked from lynx212:
dragonimp's Halloween party:

( What's with the grandmother theme?? o_O )

Happy birthday to mayracs! Hope it's a good one (weekend!)

I really hate the way I obsess over things. Although I did hold off on posting until I was in a much better mood. I was going to not post at all but I think I need to get this out so it'll hopefully stop interfering with my life and getting in the way of my writing.

Like I already said, I worry that the third chapter of Now and Then comes off as a cop-out. I was worried about it when I was planning the story, I worried over it while writing, I worried about it all the way up to posting. I thought I'd be done with the worry when I posted, but I should have known better.

Critical comments are a rare thing online and in a way, that's a pity. If I'm at all uncertain about something, I tend to think people are being polite or are too scared to say anything negative. In other words, it means I can't completely trust that people are being honest. Because I know my own habits, and I know I shy away from being critical, because I've seen authors react negatively.

But as an author I hate it, I'd rather be secure in the knowledge that readers would tell me if something I posted sucked. Or even if it was just disappointing in some way. It's not only so that I can trust the positive comments; if something is off in my writing, I want to to know about it. How else would I be able to improve? I don't normally get any feedback beforehand so comments after the fact are the only thing I have.

The last thing I want right now is reassurances, because in the state of mind I'm in, I wouldn't believe them. That's why I disallowed comments on the previous post. But that seems cowardly, so they're back on. So if the last chapter was a disappointment, I'm sorry. I gave it the best ending I could while staying true to the story and what I was trying to do with it. And now I need to let this go and move on with things.

Looks like the Twitter views are pretty much split so far *L*. I still haven't decided what I'm going to do. I signed up for Twitter mostly to follow other feeds (like NPR and a couple for job listings), but I figured, as long as it's there, I might as well use it. I'm not keen on stalkerfuel!tweets ("I'm at X, I'm going to be at Y!"), so I'm trying it out as a sort of microblog. Meaning, random thoughts that don't really deserve a blog entry are going there.

Anyway, I'm not really sure if it's worth crossposting or not. I'm also not sure how the crossposter works, but it looks like it emails the entry, so it would probably be an either-or for Dreamwidth or LJ. I'm also not sure how often it posts. If it ends up being a tweet at a time, well, that's kinda silly. But I'll let people know if I create a filter, so you can opt-in/opt-out.

(BTW, if you're on Twitter and decide to follow me, please give me a heads-up if your handle isn't one I'd recognize - I've already picked up a couple random followers so I might not follow back if I don't know who you are ^^.)

If I cross-posted from Twitter, is that something people would be interested in, or would it just be an annoyance? It would probably only be on LJ, not Dreamwidth.

Despite the positive comments, I still fear the third chapter was a disappointment. Because I'm pretty sure no one would tell me if it was. (I hate that - I'd rather be told.)

Meh. I hate writer's angst.