tsubame: (wings)
Saturday, February 11th, 2012 02:33 pm
So.

The problem with all of these competing Internet services is that they tend to divert you for the shear ease of usage. Actually writing an LJ entry actually takes some devotion, some thought . . . not much, but even so. And so people don't, because it's easier to put a shorter entry elsewhere, and so there's less reason to come to LJ in the first place, which means you end up not updating as much and . . . vicious circle.

But the fact remains that, while other services might be more convenient, LJ still reigns when it comes to having coherent and meaningful and in-depth conversations with people . . . when there are posts to comment on, that is. And when people actually comment. Granted I'm no model as far as that's concerned.

The thing that's been eating up large amounts of my spare time these days is Tumblr; mine is over here, if you're curious. I occasionally write brief pieces inspired by the pictures that I post. Not often, but occasionally.

LJ, however, remains the most convenient place for posting writing, especially as so much of mine is not in a finished form that might qualify it for a place like AO3. Et alors!

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"I thought you might be one of those people. You know. Proselyte-ing-y ones."

She shook her head. "I have two religions, one for my head and one for my heart. Science--" she tapped her temple, "--and poetry." She laid her hand on her breast. "Neither has any particular need to evangelize."

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'Do you want your receipt?'

'You may keep it. Consider it a gift from my heart to yours. I don't know what it says about my heart, that it produces cheap paper and pumps blue ink, or that it considers such things suitable gifts, but nonetheless I hope you'll accept it.'

Rose: your heart does not produce cheap paper and pump blue ink. believe me--i've checked. would you like to see the blueprints?

Me: The blueprints might be handy. Usually my heart produces smooth lined paper and pumps aetheric graphite, so this change is a bit alarming. Of course, it's SUPPOSED to produce vellum and pump egg tempera and gold leaf, but it's never worked quite right from the beginning, so . . .

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I played a random priest in a game set in 1666 London, and he was great fun. Father James Savant: High Anglican/crypto-Catholic, power-hungry and utterly ruthless, but absolutely convinced that he was doing God's work, with a taste for the finer things in life (mainly fine art, but his absolutely simple cassock is blacker than black, and his crucifix is ornate silver, and his Bible's cover is inscribed gold and jems, and his shoes are heinously expensive . . . you get the idea).

I came home from the game absolutely wanting to write stories about him, and despite the late hour sat down to hammer one out . . . only to find that the voices were ending up all wrong, too amusingly lighthearted, and I was actually writing a scene from a fanfic. So after an attempt at repair I sighed, gave up, changed the names, and now it's an XMFC AU snippet and that's it (there's precedent! Marvel 1602 by Neil bloody Gaiman, because he gets to do all the most fun stuff).

Right.

the Consolation of Philosophy )

. . . let us pray the merciful gods I write no more, at least of this.
tsubame: (wings)
Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 02:30 am
A fascinating link regarding a great editor.

Crowd-sourced publishing. An interesting idea, though we’ll have to wait and see how it goes.

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Edinburgh bears the unfortunate label of “not Japan” in my head, and so I tend to give the place short shrift, and easily forget just how lucky I am to be here. Since the culture and language are much closer to that of my native place, I don’t experience the same degree of foreign-ness, and so I don’t appreciate the city as much as I should.

So it’s good for me to go by North Bridge every once and a while, because out of all the places in the city somehow the view from their reminds me of just how lucky I am. And it reminds me that Edinburgh is an incredible place, a vision in buff stone, a place of history and wonders and mysteries if only I dig beneath the everyday to find them.

And it figures that I don’t have any particularly great photos of the view from there. It’s rather difficult to capture such a grand view on a 2D camera-- half the magnificence is the wonders receding further back into space. Carlton Hill with its whimsical structures falling away to the sky and the far-off waters of the ocean, seagulls wheeling in the wind, the impressive sweep of the bridge over the great ravine that holds the train station, the height of the hills on either side, the ornate stone buildings decorated with mythic beasts and reclining gods . . .

Photobucket

Here’s the one shot I do have of Carlton Hill. They hold the Samhain and Beltain celebrations up there-- both of which I missed, alas. But if I were going to pick a likely spot for magic in Edinburgh this’d be it, with the eclectic buildings, the observatory dome, the obelisk, the tower. It would be a great location for a school of wizardry, a part of the town and yet separate, a lofty place between land and sea, sky and rock, looking over both the cultured city and the barren wildness of Arthur’s Seat.

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I wanted to put up more writing for [livejournal.com profile] saiun_challenge’s birthday celebration, but alas it seems this is all I’m going to manage. And I still have one more bit to write before it’s really complete! ::sobs:: Oh, and I haven’t edited it yet, so it’s probably so terrible as to be embarrassing. But I’m too tired to look it over now, and the deadline will be past if I wait to do so until I’ve had some sleep.

This AU makes me nostalgic for high school. How weird.

Dark Jewels Saiunkoku

Roseford's Queen: Part 1
Roseford's Queen: Part 2
Roseford’s Queen: Part 3

Roseford’s Queen: Part 4 )
tsubame: (demon gold)
Friday, May 20th, 2011 12:59 pm
This is possibly the saddest thing I have ever written for Saiunkoku.

the Death of the Heart )

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BWWWWWAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH.

::bawls::

Somebody better put up something fluffy, STAT.
tsubame: (foot-mouth)
Thursday, May 5th, 2011 09:46 am
It happens to be the birthday month of [livejournal.com profile] saiun_challenge, which means I need to post a bunch of fics that haven’t gone up thus far. So prepare yourself for an invasion of Saiunkoku AUs . . .

The first being a continuation of one of my previously-posted AUs, which I very simply titled “College” (link is to the ff.net page, since I can’t find the LJ post at the moment). It’s purest insanity. The continuing adventures of Seiran and Ensei. At college. Warnings for language.

College: Unfortunate Acquaintances )
tsubame: (foot-mouth)
Thursday, March 31st, 2011 11:10 pm
I have FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY finished chapter 3 of Demon Hunter! We’re not going to talk about how long I’ve been working on it.

Demon Hunter: Previous Installments
Chapter One: Departure
Chapter Two: The Long Road
Chapter Three: Learning Experience (part 1: Gold)

Chapter Three: Learning Experience (part 2: Soap) )

Sidestories
Haunted

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Photobucket

One of my previous roommate's cats, Shunki, as an adolescent, having a stretch on my futon. An absolutely gorgeous cat, and well aware of it. Like my Jackl she was also a rescue-- my friend fished her and her littermates out of a box in a river in Tokyo. All went to good homes and have grown up to be wonderful pets. Shunki and her brother Ensei are now living happily in the United States, where they are referred to fondly by my previous roommate as "her Stupids."

The kanji for Shunki's name is "春姫", which translates to "spring princess." Rarely have name and personality suited each other so well in anyone.

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5 Reasons Humanity is Terrible at Democracy

Deeply interesting and informative reading. Terribly depressing, though.

Bioware Tells Straight Men to "Get Over" Being Hit on By Gay Men in "Dragon Age 2"

Good for them. An intelligent and reasoned response to a complaint probably wasn't either.

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A Color of the Sky, by Tony Hoagland )
tsubame: (hey!)
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011 12:38 am
Photobucket

There is a rather remarkable propensity towards flowers in Scotland; hard to believe in a country so far north and yet true. Summer, for instance, is nothing but endless green and gold where I grew up in the States, but here there were more flowering things than I could name. The roses, too, grow splendidly, and last well into fall.

I never did find that camera cord; I ended up replacing it.

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The birds outside our window are dinosaurs. WE NOW HAVE THE BEST FACT.

~xkcd

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while reading the Mauritius Command:

Oh, Stephen. Jack was up all night worrying about you and you come back with an albatross egg and a parrot that speaks French.

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geekery and fanfic in an email today:

I have a crazy Ryuuki, a three-eyed demon Ryuuki, an assassin Ryuuki, a chichi-ue Ryuuki, a Ryuuki hooked up to computers, a ridiculously cute Ryuuki, a Ryuuki with piercings, a courtesan Ryuuki, a dragon Ryuuki . . .

::is beginning to suspect that she's deeply insane::

You know what I don't have? A one-eyed warrior Ryuuki!

::glowing cheerfully at the thought::

::fairly certain that she is quite insane, actually::
tsubame: (foot-mouth)
Tuesday, October 12th, 2010 02:24 am
Thanks to a really incredible review on my Dark Jewels Saiunkoku fic, I was actually motivated to continue writing it. It isn't finished, not by a long shot, but I thought I would type up what I have so far.

Dark Jewels Saiunkoku
Roseford's Queen, Part 1 | Part 2

Roseford's Queen, Part 3 )

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This song is well and truly lodged in my head, and I find myself singing it most everywhere I go.

tsubame: (foot-mouth)
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 12:01 pm
For reference, I thought I'd put up the glossary I've created to go along with my Cyberpunk fic. This was created for my own convenience, so I could keep track of the terms I was using. I generally prefer to leave the exact definitions up to the reader's imagination, but some prefer a more concrete example.

Cyberpunk AU: Glossary )

This glossary will be updated as more terms are created and require definition.

Previously posted Cyberpunk installments:

Main Storyline

Chapter 1: Welcome Home
Chapter 2: First Day on the New Job
Chapter 3: Search Parameters
Chapter 4 Part 1: Memory Parity Failure
Chapter 4 Part 2: Is it Tuesday?
tsubame: (foot-mouth)
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 07:27 pm
All right, I managed to do a bit more of Cyberpunk. So hopefully this, plus what was posted earlier, makes for the entirety of Chapter 4. I've thought about adding more to it, but I think that content's going to be pushed back into Chapter 5. Although everyone's thoughts on the matter would be very much appreciated.

Main Storyline

Chapter 1: Welcome Home
Chapter 2: First Day on the New Job
Chapter 3: Search Parameters

Chapter 4 Part 1: Memory Parity Failure

Chapter 4 Part 2: Is it Tuesday? )
Saturday, August 7th, 2010 07:45 am
Megaupload link to Within Temptation's "a Final Dream," as quoted in the previous post.

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Even Through the Summer Storm, by Carol Clark Williams

wild geese imagine the moon and
row toward it, writing
lines of poetry.

Against the gothic clouds they sketch
sestinas, every stanza
beginning with the letter "v".

They search the lightning-punctuated sky
for words that rhyme with
"flight" and "night".

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. . . yeah, I wrote more Kingdom Hearts fic. Even more plotless and pointless this time! I blame [livejournal.com profile] majochan, because I think the initial prom-shenanagins idea was hers. She's the one with the truly brilliant ideas about it, too. Had me in stitches.

FIC.

Title: Dance Lessons
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts

What are we gonna do at prom? )

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I wanna be a member of the Grown-Up Party! With maybe a little humor thrown in, since I don't want to be a part of an organization that lacks a sense of humor.

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The problem with many computers has its roots in a problem with humans-- we don't like to think. We're lazy, and if we can help it we'll take the easy way out. This is why Apple and Windows are more successful then, say, Linux-- they make things easier for people. If something seems to hard, we give up on it fairly easily.

So computers do things for us so that we won't hit that threshold. Which works . . . up to a point. Problems arise when the computer assumes it knows what you're trying to do and starts doing it for you-- but gets it wrong. The subtleties of human purpose in using programs are often lost on the programs themselves, which in trying to help too much end up hindering or even preventing. Ironically, for most of these programs there's no easy way to tell them to stop doing it. No easy way to reassure them that you know what you're doing, however strange that might seem, and you don't need the computer's help to do it.

Which of course leads to the comical situation of me shaking my fist at the computer screen and yelling, "stop assuming you're smarter than me!" I bought my camera for the express reason that, while I can definitely use the help in setting up my shots most of the time, not to mention the convenience of having the balance adjusted for me, I want to be able to tell it to stop and leave me alone, that I can take shots that its tiny computer brain can't conceive the purpose or propriety of.

I just wish I could do that with Word 2007. Maybe if the damn thing was in English rather than Japanese I might have a chance of figuring it out . . .

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There was a full glass coffee pot mostly submerged in a sink-full of water at work today. A moment's thought gave me the answer to why it was there. Still, I spent a minute smiling at the serene ridiculousness of the image, and thought to myself happily, "the world is stranger and more wonderful than I was previously aware."

I love those moments, I really do.

Recently my father sent me a postcard from where he was attending a seminar on radio telescopes in North Carolina. The card read, "I thought you would find this particular postcard funny."

The postcard is a before-and-after sort. The top shows the radio telescope standing proud and lovely, a lacework flower-cup of whitewashed girders. The second picture is from the next day, and shows a pile of white wreckage where once the telescope stood.

It did, indeed, make me laugh. One day-- beautiful functioning high-tech scientific instrument! The next day-- pile of twisted rubble! Aaaah, I can't believe it just collapsed like that-- like a fflan in a cupboard, to quote Eddie Izzard. Just imagine, some poor dude left work, locked the door behind him, everything was fine. He drives up the next morning, and wham! I bet he totally BSODed. Or maybe just sighed and drove off to find the nearest bar.

I'm still laughing about it, yeah. Apparently my father knows me quite well, including my odd sense of humor.

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I don't know what it says about me, but pictures like this one, of the First Family visiting a National Park, make me really really happy. That strange feeling of pride and hope-- I don't know where it comes from, but it's all the more welcome given my generally somewhat depressing news-reading hobby.

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An article written by a hibakusha on her experience in Hiroshima. I am adamantly anti-nuclear weapons, under any and all circumstances. I further believe that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were absolutely wrong and should be a source of national shame to the U.S.A., instead of an oft-ignored, bare paragraph in history textbooks. Considering that WWII is America's last "just" war (or possibly our only one, though I'm reluctant to even go that far), my opinions on the matter are hardly what one would call widespread.
Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 03:14 pm
Remember how Saiunkoku has eaten my life for more than a month now? Yeah, this is one of the results.

This is the first fic in a much larger Saiunkoku AU that [livejournal.com profile] majochan and I are working on. All 3v1l that follows I blame on her, since she started the whole thing with this sketch (bottom-most). Decided to put this one up first since this is the point where our version of events diverges from the canon. A thousand thank-yous to [livejournal.com profile] subsiding_leaf for beta-reading and giving this monster of a fic such a thorough and much-needed editing.

X-posted like woah. Sorry about that.

Title: A Double-Edged Sword Cuts Both Ways
Pairing: none
Rating: PG; brief violence
Summary: A single pebble changes the course of an avalanche. During Seien's thirteenth year, his grandfather takes the prince and his mother to Sa Province. One year later . . .

The sky was grey . . . )

Oh, the 3v1l is great, yesyesyes.
Saturday, October 1st, 2005 06:29 pm
Have spent a day that was either deeply unproductive or astoundingly productive, or possibly both. Have placed most of this entry behind cuts for the sake of not being horribly annoying. Don't expect me to make a habit of being considerate with my lj entries, though.

Lazy Saturday . . . )

Poetry . . . )

A small child is screaming bloody murder beyond my balcony. There is a gread deal of humanity crammed into a very small amount of space here; perhaps the greatest feat of those who live in this country is to create an impression of infinite space where there is in fact very little. It is not one that I can imitate, as my nature is given to clutter and overcrowding, a riot of colors and motion in a small space.

More poetry . . . )

Question and answer . . . )

The heart has reasons about which reason knows nothing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Plato having defined man to be a two-legged animal without feathers, Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it into the Academy, and said, ‘This is Plato’s man.’ On which account this addition was made to the definition: ‘With broad flat nails.’

Missing people . . . )

Found while re-organizing my bookmarks: the webpage of Heinz Insu Fenkl. I was perhaps a little in love with him while I was reading Memories of my Ghost Brother, and his page is very interesting to browse through. I especially recommend the links at the bottom, particularly if you are at all curious about comparative mythology.
Sunday, May 8th, 2005 02:27 am
Random plotless EN snippet: Seasons )
Saturday, March 12th, 2005 01:04 am
We watched Donnie Darko tonight (we being me, my older sister, and said sister's boyfriend), which was really an amazing movie. The director's cut, and thus easier to understand than the regular release. It was . . . amazing. I can't tell you what it's about, it's much too complex. Said sister's boyfriend tried before the movie, and finally just told me how it starts and left it at that. Afterwards I went upstairs and talked to my brother, and I tried to tell him what it's about, and eventually gave up and did the same thing as said sister's boyfriend.

It's an amazing movie. Creepy, thought-provoking, and uplifting all at once. I don't know if I could handle seeing it more than once, but I will, inevitably, because I want to show it to other people.

We wantsssss it, preciousssss . . .

I told [livejournal.com profile] faerieboots that if she posted a snippet from her story, I would post a snippet featuring the character of her choice. I did this figuring that I was safe; I have a backlog of snippets for all of my current characters in my notebook, and they need only to be typed up and edited.

She managed to catch me totally off-guard when she requested an old character of mine, Alasdair, who I have not written for in quite some time. Fortunately there was a delay in her posting, which gave me time enough to send an email to my co-author for those particular stories, the brilliant and sometimes criminally-minded (you know I do love a good intrigue-- take the compliment, you. Who can identify the quote?) [livejournal.com profile] aiara and get her permission to post one of them. And I had to hunt down my copy of said stories.

Re-reading Alasdair and Cellin's adventures makes me feel rather nostalgic. They were great fun to write, and I had such a good time doing it . . . I think every now and then of continuing onwards with it. Not that we ever had much direction to begin with, but there was plot developing, and angst expected in the future . . . ah, well.


Well, here's the first part of Alasdair and Cellin's story, still in its choppy original back-and-forth format. I warn you, this is from several years ago and is presented without the benefit of the editing it recieved before it was published in the first issue of Eye of Unicorn, Tongue of Dragon . . . my, that was a long time ago. )

Somehow it has gotten to be very late. Imagine that.
Tags:
Wednesday, March 9th, 2005 12:04 am
There are some things that I do not, ever, write down. Writing is memory, writing is a record, and there are some things to which you do not desire to return. Best to let them go, best for them to fade into the steadily distancing past.

I am well suited to editing, I think. I certainly get the practice.

Found scribbled on an old cupholder. The quote is from Borges:

History adds that before or after Shakespeare died, he discovered himself standing before God, and said to Him, "I, who have been so many men in vain, wish to be ONE, to be myself." God's voice answered him out of a whirlwind: "I, too, am not I; I dreamed the world as you, Shakespeare, dreamed your own work, and among the forms of my dream are you, who like me are many, yet no one."

Since I've begun this uncontrolled posting of snippets, the 3v1l has spread to other people's journals. In honor of this great 3v1l, I have evil Emrys snippets. )
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2005 01:03 am


Which Villain Character Are You?


Me, last night: "I'm going to start teleporting out your vertebrae one at a time, starting at the bottom. This is a good idea!"

Kibbles and bits and bits and bits . . . )
Monday, February 21st, 2005 05:16 pm
It's raining today, a grey rain, a rain that turns yesterday's snow to slush and treachery. We passed some ten car accidents on the road in yesterday. Fenderbenders, breakdowns, fishtails, an SUV flipped over on its side in the ditch beside the road. Nothing too serious, fortunately.

This entry may be edited later, if I write another snippet tonight, or if I decide to extend the scene. Not certain if I will, though.

I've extended it, somewhat. There is Emrys-torture now. Sorry, Emrys. )