So I finally got around to doing what I've been muttering to myself about for the last three months: I've resigned as the admin of the CFFML. I'd been in the position for just over a year now, and it was a good experience overall, but I've been feeling a need to get my life back into balance--ie, not to have to spend all my time on the computer. And the time that I *do* spend on the computer, I'd rather spend doing things other than administrivia and rules-thumping, including a) writing (naturally ^^), b) doing personal email and perhaps a bit of social weblogging, and c) free-range exploring. With maybe some d) C&Cs as well. If I'm feeling ambitious.

I also felt, I don't know, like I was becoming too much of The Admin--like I was on the verge of becoming a Fixture, and that I'd get too attached to the power and security of the role and then wouldn't be able to let it go. And that's not really what I want to be about. While I do think it's important for someone to keep order on a list that's both very large and very tightly focused (unless all the list members have the time and energy to plow through heaps of off-topicness every day), and I think I did a tolerably good job of it, I was starting to get itchy about always telling people what they could and couldn't do. But maybe I'm just a weenie like that. ^^ In any case, I'm confident that Beth will be fabulous as the new admin. *hugs*

And I had a huge, long ramble on the recent fic-meme, but it's not being posted tonight (if ever) because I'm leaving for a con in Boston tomorrow and I've got to go to bed.

Catch you later!

Because I'm at work and I'm bleary-eyed and mindless and I'm trying to avoid writing a competition analysis for our latest book, here are my WK pairings, in approximate order of frequency. (Note that these are just pairings that happen inside my head, not necessarily pairings that I look for when reading or that I see in the series.)

Omi/Ken
Omi/Ken
Mmmm, Omi/Ken
Aya/Youji
Omi/Ken/Aya-chan
Omi/Aya
Omi/Ken/Aya
Aya/Ken
Youji/Ken
Omi/"Omi"
Omi/Ken/"Omi"
Ken/Schuldig
Omi/Schuldig
Youji/Youji
Youji/Omi

("Omi" can mean either an alternate-universe Omi or Omi's double--a secret twin, a clone, whatever. Multiple Youjis are pretty much always an alternate-universe crossover scenario.)

There are some others, but those don't happen often enough to register on the scale. As you can see, there's a heavy preponderance of Omi and a distinct shortage of Schwarz. I really just don't quite grok Schwarz, which is something I need to address for possible future stories, because my tendency at the moment is to have them turn up, do Bad Stuff, and then conveniently disappear. I'm starting to get a handle on Schuldig, I think, and I'd like to do something decent with Farfarello someday. (Unlikely to actually happen, but it's there at the back of my mind.) Part of my problem in working with Schwarz is that, to me, Crawford's power is just broken. Either he's impossible to put one over on because he sees all and knows all, or there has to be some limit on his power, and I haven't yet arrived at a solution that doesn't feel arbitrary, limiting his vision just for the sake of making him beatable. There was one storyline that managed to work, because the element that countered his power happened to be an integral part of the plot, but for the most part, my solutions tend to be lame or deux ex machina, or both. I mean, what *do* you do with a precog?

....

Ahem! *Moving* right along....

Alexandra, I side with you in not seeing Ken/Kase, although for me it might just be due to the shallow fact that I don't really find Kase attractive. ^_^ My Ken has generally had a fair amount of experience with women; his first time with a guy is pretty much always with Omi. Omi starts out either experienced with other men or a virgin, depending on the vicissitudes of the plot, but usually has never been with a woman, aside from that brief kiss with Ouka, which barely counts. Aya is almost exclusively virginal, while Youji is straight, damnit, until the inevitable "oops! uh, I didn't just do that, did I? oh well, guess I did" moment. One of these days, I ought to do something that respects the canon and leaves Youji happily straight. Except, uh, that he's not really that happy in the canon, and I haven't yet come up with a female character that's enough of a shock to the system to break him out of the self-destructive playboy rut. (It's even worse once you get into the DP albums and he starts getting more seriously bent.) FWIW, I try not to be too tidy about fixing him, or anyone--no healing power of cock or whatever--but leaving him unpaired off makes me twitchy. Symmetry, all is symmetry. Or something like that.

Wow, this is a really long post....

All right, you lot, that's more than enough of that. I've got to get back to work now anyway.

...I can't believe I'm posting this.

<N-chan slams the Koneko's shutter down on this sorry scene>

Happy New Year to all! In the spirit of turning over a new leaf and all that, I've finally updated my weblog link list to better reflect my actual reading habits. It's still a bit idiosyncratic, and I think I'm still missing a bunch of people, but what the heck. There it is.

Alexandra: Ken's eyes are brown in the manga art, and either blue or green in most of the anime art, except that now they seem to have split the difference. If it makes you feel any better, I made a whole big deal about the blue/green thing in "Omelette," and then turned right around in another (unreleased) story and made them brown. I think most people make them brown. Don't ask me how I can have not settled on a color for this long, though. And, in fact, Omi has had pierced ears throughout. The only Weiss without a piercing is Ken--uh, at least as far as I know.

And Ken *is* a slut. In the good way, of course. In my mindspace, he usually starts out not sure about the whole thing (remnants of a Catholic background + macho jock thing) but once he gets past a certain point (under Omi's tender-yet-playful ministrations), look out! He'll do anything, just about. Though generally only with the people he genuinely cares about. At least in my head. ^_^

And it feels like there's something else I should be posting about, but I can't remember, and in any case I have to get to bed so I can be conscious for work tomorrow. (Short week! Yay! If I can just survive sending the issue to press.)

Why does it seem like I'm always going to bed in this log?

I made a bad pun in my web site update mailing, and Pike ran with it. Thanks again, Pike. <snicker>

Aya. With ponytail.

Shpoing!!!!

Yes, all right, I know I'm supposed to be doing email. I'm going....

I like that "get tough" shot of Omi, though, the first color one on the bottom row. And wow, Ken's eyes really are teal....

All right, all right! Email! I'm getting to it. :P

(Thanks to Jey for the heads-up. ^_^)

Oh, wait--I already said that. Ahahahaha! Never mind, then.

*Bed,* dammit.

PS: Merry Christmas. (Duh. ^_^)

Uhhh...did I say "Tuesday"? I meant Wednesday. But hey, look, it ended up being Tuesday after all. By which I mean that the final chapters of "Falling from the Moon" are up, at long last. Go and knock yourselves out. ^^

And anyone who's recently sent me email--I haven't read it yet, having been head down in the book and then this update. (Kristin, I tried, but between Dad popping into my room at all hours and general brain-friedness, I figured I'd better wait. Rest assured, however, that I'm definitely looking forward to it. *Woof.* ^^)

And now to bed. Again.

I'm so done, I'm beyond sticking a fork in. The book's not finished, but Dad will just have to get the work in progress; what I've got looks pretty good, and I *have* to go to bed. So for everybody who came around looking for the update to "Falling," sorry, but it's not going up until Tuesday at the earliest, and possibly not until next weekend, as I have some rewrites to doublecheck and I've got to have the brain cell functional. By New Year's, I promise, barring unspeakable catastrophe.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas, everyone! Take care and be well.

Urgh. Dad keeps coming into the room, so I have to keep hiding what I'm doing. But the scanning proceeds apace. Although I seem to be doing more illustrating than I'd originally intended to. Blame Satsuki--I kept finding all these pictures of her that worked great for "Magician." Plus that story's really long, of course, so I kept going, "All these spreads, and no art!"

I think I was up too late working on this, though, because once I went to bed in the wee hours of the morning, I had this dream where there was a special filter in Photoshop that would let you turn a picture around, like Flip Horizontal/Vertical, except that you saw the side of the character that wasn't visible in the original picture--the front, if he or she was facing away from you, or vice versa--and all CLAMP's characters were naked on the other side. I'm not sure whether this was low-budget costuming or CLAMP being pervs. In either case, once again, I blame Satsuki.

I'm now combing the web looking for a screen cap of Idomu from CLAMP School. *Any* screen cap. But hopefully not a naked one.

Mmm, detachable head. (And backbone, as I recall.) While this could undoubtably be useful, it would probably disconcert friends and co-workers, so--better not. I'll get back to you about the collective itself when I finally get around to answering some email. Hopefully this weekend. ^^

What N-chan wants for Christmas: a spellcheck for AppleWorks that doesn't suck like the Hoover. Preferably one that doesn't query me EVERY TIME two words are joined by an em-dash or ellipsis. In other amusing spellcheck tricks: "stepping-stones" (which, yes, should be "steppingstones," thank you AppleWorks) also brought up the suggestion "step ping-stones." What exactly *is* a "ping-stone"? A decent thesaurus would be nice, too. Duh stamp on Apple for following MicroSith's lead and removing all synonyms for "fool" (as a noun), as if we're not allowed to insult people by calling them idiots anymore. At least it no longer does what it used to, which is whack the "-ly" off all adverbs automatically, so that looking up "gently" gets you synonyms for "gent." I'm going to try downloading the upgrade tonight and see if that improves things. What I really want is an electronic Roget's, though.

It turns out that there was not, in fact, game playing and internet surfing last weekend, because instead there was holiday shopping and computer fixing. *cries* And now I really want to spend *this* weekend doing those things, plus anime watching and reading, and I'm probably going to be mired down in projects instead. I've gotten back prereader comments on "Falling," and they're good stuff too, lots of things I missed, so I'm working to try to get that released for Christmas. And I have another project, also for Christmas, which is to make a nice book of my fanfic for my Dad. (No, not *those* fics. The parentally friendly ones.) Unfortunately, what this means is that I get to spend all day at work in Mad desktop publishing frenzy! because the issue is going to press next week, and then I come home and spend all evening in Mad desktop publishing frenzy! trying to get the book done. I'm illustrating it with scans from various artbooks and manga, and I got bewitched last night into making a collage of Subaru, Kamui, Hokuto, and Seishirou for "Broken Worlds," which took far longer than expected. Must...keep it...simple...argh.

And I can't find a decent cover. I wanted a clamp-style binder or report cover (no ring-binding) with decent weight and maybe a vaguely leatherlike texture, something that'll make it look like a real book, and nothing is exactly right. I haven't given up hope yet; I think I might have an extra cover like the one on my thesis tucked away in some back closet, and that'll do, if I can find it. Failing that, maybe I can get the local Staples to bind it for me.

So anyway, off I go to kill myself by carrying two boxes of inkjet paper, a World Almanac, and a scratching pad for Maiko all the way to the 9th Street station. Pray for me that I make it and don't sink down somewhere in the middle of Washington Square Park--and, while you're at it, that I actually manage to not be on deadline for at least two days out of this four-day weekend. ^^v

Kristin, I'd love to form a Borglike collective with you, but unfortunately, as you and others who read this (or no longer do) know, I can't even keep my own weblog up-to-date. Except, er, here I am today. Heh.

In other news, the concluding side story of "Falling" has been making the baby N-chan cry, but it's done--DONE, I tell you! MWAHAHAHA!--and so the whole thing is finished, except for prereading and another pass or two of editing and final fact-checking. I filled in the last blanks yesterday, five and a half years to the day after starting the fanfic. Of course, there are other side stories that could be done between the end of the main story and this side story, and I'll probably do at least a couple of them eventually, but they're not essential to the basic Issei/Jinpachi relationship, so I feel I can call the story "done" without them.

And if I ever again propose to write a twelve-page story without the use of pronouns to refer to the two main characters--somebody *please* hold me down.

Other life-updates and possible social blogging and thoughts on the current topics of discussion to come later (I hope), as I have to go out and finish my holiday shopping and fix my friend's AppleWorks dictionary problem. Aside from that, my plans for this weekend include a) playing games, and b) attempting to make my links page vaguely relevant again. Oh, yeah--and c) watching ice skating, since the ISU Grand Prix will be on. Go, France! *meow*

And I just went back and reread some of my log archives, and wow, I totally contradicted myself on the "voices" issue, didn't I? (ie, "my mind and body belong to me, not the voices" vs. the incident of Ken taking over not only the brain but the vocal cords) Oh, well. There's still a lot of difference between muttering to oneself occasionally and having an Amazing Mystical Connection That's So Profound It's Scary and Ordinary People Wouldn't Understand It, right? Right?

<crickets chirp>

Uh, yeah. Right. Sure. Whatever. ^^;;;;;