I'm liked! *niyaaaao* *prrrr* ^_^ D, if you or someone who talks to you is reading this, take care, be well, and I hope you feel better soon. <worry-angst> As for the writing thing, don't stress about it. I wasn't really taking it as a case of there being some One True Way that I was failing to measure up to--it was more that I read your piece and went "Oh, wow, there's all this cool stuff that I *could* be doing to make my writing better! And I'm not! I must wrap my brain around these concepts and figure out which ones I can integrate!" And then I started unraveling into these long, looping swirls of mental deconstruction and reconstruction, rather like a transport scene from Clover. (I do that. ^^) My email was the sound of N-chan self-analyzing herself into a momentary fracturing of identity. I think I'm mostly back in one piece now, though.

And since I'm the sort of person who compulsively has to explaaaaaain herself at every opportunity, whether there's any real need to or not, I'd just like to clarify that I don't give out C&Cs solely to get them back. That sounded really shallow and selfish. ^^;;; Though I do believe that energy has to move in a back-and-forth exchange, and I've been kind of rolled up in a ball here in the corner for the past some months, not really being a part of that give-and-take. I've got boatloads of stories sitting in mail folders and on my hard drive that I've been meaning to respond to forever, but in addition to having had a lack of time for rereading and commenting lately, I still need to figure out just where the happy medium is between vague warm fuzzies and line editing. ^^ The wish not to traumatize people unnecessarily is one of the main reasons why I tend to limit my C&Cs to people I know and who can deal with me doing the comma sutra on them.

(Speaking of which, Kristin, I swear that I'm really, really, really going to get the edits to you by the end of this weekend. If not, you can beat me with a stick. ^_^)

So I spent the morning on Friday sort of wishing that Omi and Ken would just get a room somewhere. Not that I object on principle to the two of them making out in my head, but I've been trying to be more virtuous at work--ie, to concentrate on actual work for a change, and not on reading weblogs or messageboards or on the antics of characters, however entertaining. It's a delicate dance to get the characters to absent themselves when necessary without worrying about the prospect of squelching them out of my brain for good. Luckily, Omi and Ken seem irrepressible. We're on iteration 23 (or thereabouts) of my archetypal post-DP OmiKen storyline--the one I'm unfortunately probably never going to write--and so far there's no sign of diminished interest. Sweet angst and even sweeter surrender, tucked in between the style sheets and the shopping cart update. ^^

I need to have a word or two with Ken, though, because he has a bad habit of not only taking over my brain cell, but the vocal cords as well. It's extremely disconcerting to "come to" and realize that you've been walking down a New York City sidewalk muttering "Kiss me! Ah...hnnnhh...yeah!" Bad Ken. No Omi-biscuit.

Ken: <puppy ears> Oro?

<sweatdrop> I swear, I'm going to end up on meds someday....

I managed to finish the first editing pass through Chapter 16 of "Falling" this week, which amazes me--usually these things take much longer. I'll do Chapter 17 next, and then I'll need to let them both sit for a bit. I don't know what I'm going to work on in the interim. A Weiss fic seems likely, considering the current mental activity, but there are also at least five other possibilities ranging from the next "Wings" sidestory to a CCS lemonfic to that dang Gundam Wing/Escaflowne crossover thing. Hmm. Decisions, decisions....

Anyone who writes and hasn't already read D's advice to writers post probably should. It's full of excellent recommendations. For myself, I tend to be less free-form in my first writing stage; I don't skip bits and fill them in later, for instance, but that's mainly because I'm afraid that I won't be able to pull the pieces together if they're not already connected. Instead, I write as though I'm building a bridge and crossing it at the same time: I make sure that each step (ie, sentence) is solidly in place before I go on to the next one. I'll go back afterward and improve the bridge, of course, closing up any gaps between the stones and smoothing off the rough spots so that people don't trip on them. Sometimes I'll tear up part of the bridge and rebuild it. But on that first pass of creation I need to feel relatively firm text behind and beneath me as much as possible. This is, at least in part, why my writing process is so slow.

I also edit to a small extent while I write--in fact, I often start a writing session by going over the last paragraph or two that I've done and tweaking at them. I find that doing so helps me to get the momentum going again and lets me step out into the void of the unwritten more freely, with less fear. I try to build reasonably good grammar into the sentences from the start, so a lot of what I do during the serious editing phases of a story involves trimming out excess verbiage and refining word choices and metaphors. I tend toward the florid, so I generally make an effort to simplify as much as I can, though it's not always a successful one. ^^ One of the things I look at is "follow": does what happens in the next sentence follow naturally from this one, or do I need to elaborate on how we get from here to there? Alternatively, am I explaining the process in too much minute detail? (A hazard of the bridge-building mentality. ^^) My editing tends to progress in much the same way as my writing, going line by line from the beginning of the story or chapter to the end, scrutinizing each sentence in its particulars. I repeat this process over and over until I can get from one end to the other without more than a couple of not-very-essential word or punctuation changes.

The macro issues are a weak area for me, or perhaps I should say a less conscious one. I wouldn't know a literary theory if it walked up and bit me on the butt. As for overall story structure and thematic considerations, I have the rather bad habit of letting them fend for themselves. (In most cases, I know where I'm going and what I'm trying to achieve with a story, but it's largely an instinctive knowing, not an analytical one.) It takes me a long time to get enough distance from a story to read it as an outsider would--I suspect it's because I linger so long over each individual sentence that they burn deeply into my brain and won't fade for weeks or months--and I have difficulty reading "wide-focused" until I do have that distance. So I rely very heavily on my beta-readers in questions of overall flow and construction and whether or not the story's point has gotten across. This is why beta-readers are a boon to any writer. ^_^ But all these things are aspects of my writing that I definitely need to work on.

The lesson here is that as a writer one should never become complacent. There's always something more to learn, some new challenge to be overcome. ^_^

This is already really long, so I'll just wave hi back to the people who said hi when I linked them, and touch quickly on a couple of other topics of general conversation.

About the issue of people using honorifics to refer to themselves: when Sorata first introduces himself to Fuuma in X 2, he says "I'm Arisugawa Sorata; call me Sora-chan!" So "-chan" is permissible, if you don't mind people thinking you're a dip. That's exactly why I use it, in fact: "Hi! I'm cute! And fluffy! And harmless! Like me!" <pops kitty ears and tail> What really gets up my nose are the people who call themselves "-dono" or "-sama," but I just strip the honorific whenever I refer to them and leave it at that.

Finishing a fic can be a little scary--that feeling of something ending, of you and your well-loved characters going separate ways--but for me, every story has already begun leaving me just as soon as I start writing it down. Its vibrancy, its aliveness and very personal intensity are sacrificed in the work of making it concrete and available to other people. So by the time I reach the end, I'm usually just as glad to be able to let it fall.

And as for getting or not getting C&Cs and the impetus to keep writing: well, I was writing fanfic before I knew there was any audience for it, and I'll probably keep writing one way or another when people have forgotten about me. ^_^ It's the fire in the head that drives me more than anything else: the pressure to get an idea or emotion *out* into the world before it makes me crazy, the need to overcome the fear that would otherwise render me silenced. Which is not to say that I don't like to get C&Cs--I most certainly do. (In fact, it's about time to send a few C&Cs out into the universal stream so I can get a bit of karma back. ^^) But I'm wary of putting too much weight on "what people want." Having a story appreciated for itself is one thing, regardless of whether that appreciation is highly critical or somewhat shallow. Having a story feed a demand tends to create a tug to write to feed that demand further--and I'm a little afraid that consciously or unconsciously I'll get caught up by that undertow. (Gee, I'm just a bundle of neuroses tonight. :P)

Finally, and on a sillier note, I recently picked up a copy of Dion Fortune's novel The Sea Priestess, and in the introduction she had a great line about authors and their tendencies toward wish-fulfillment: the way, for instance, a not-very-good male author's heroine frequently tends to be a caricature of the perceived "ideal" woman, an impossible agglomeration of traits.

"Equally the lady novelist will provide her readers with such males as never stepped into a pair of trousers; on whom, in fact, trousers would be wasted."

*meow* ^_^

Well, Shoujocon kind of kicked my butt last weekend. Oh, it was great, lots of fun, but by the end I was really mentally tired. I was on four panels, two of them as the moderator--and, er, I'm afraid I was somewhat of an obnoxious know-it-all on the "Myth, Magic, and Mysticism" panel. My apologies to anyone who wished I would just shut up already. ^^;;; I managed to pick up some neat X doujinshi in the dealers room--more of Daisuke's adventures, as mentioned by Arielle somewhere on here. I met and talked to various cool people--although most the people I went there really hoping to talk to and hang out with I was too shy to say very much to, while I ended up going out places and having very long conversations with other people that I hadn't even heard of before. The masquerade was fun on Saturday night, but after that I was extremely tired and sat and babbled mindlessly at Amarythia until I finally convinced myself to go to bed. How tired was I? I spent a good couple of minutes staring at the backside of a person in Youji-pants before realizing that the person in question a) wasn't really Youji and b) wasn't male. <sigh>

And driving home from Shoujocon, I came to the realization that I have a limited amount of socialization in me. While I had a good time at both AX and Shoujocon and enjoyed hanging out with lots of people, by the end of that two weeks I was feeling kind of stretched out, as though I'd lost my own shape. So I think I'm going to hibernate and be antisocial for a little while.

In other news...I think I finished Chapter 17 of "Falling"? It kind of snuck up on me; I just started the last scene today, and then Oops! I was done. Of course, it's got more purple in it than Kamui's eyes right now, but even though I find editing more frustrating than writing in that I'll go over and over the same few lines for days, at the same time it's much easier because you know the basic outline of what you've got, and all you have to do is refine within that outline. You're not leaping out into the utterly unknown void, which is the part I always struggle with.

Ah, the joys of polishing out the repetitions and awkwardnesses. Sabina, I totally understand what you mean about those meaningful looks and smiles. It seems like I have two or three in every freakin' paragraph. Some of those will be among the first to go, I'm sure. And I have this awful sneaking suspicion that Issei's big Speech of Realization back in chapter 16 very closely echoes one of Subaru's big Speeches of Realization in "Sakura." Like, possibly word-for-word in some places. Except I can't remember which one I think it is, or where it might be lurking. Am I going to have to reread *all* of "Sakura," in addition to all of "Falling," as part of the editing process? I'm starting to think so. ^^;;;;

Last night's dreams were all Omi, all the time, which I take to mean that I need to daydream about him more, so as to keep him from turning up in my subconscious. (Although there's something to be said for dreaming about Omi.) It's not that I don't *want* to daydream about him; it's just that I don't have a new and really brilliant storyline at the moment. So right now it's the clone love slave thing again....

And the other day my over-tired brain was engaged (for no particular reason) in trying to fit the Weiss guys to various Norse deities, based more on obscure sound similarities in their names than on any mythological appropriateness, though there were some unexpected resonances there, too. Youji ended up as Loki and Aya was Freyr. I had trouble figuring out one for Ken; Fenris sprang to mind, but that would make him Youji's kid and, well, that was weird. And then I thought Omi = Odin, and promptly fell over, because while it suits my general inclination to make Omi all-powerful and "the solid leader of Weiss" in all things, the notion of Omi as the All-Father just plain made my head hurt.

Finally, a little tidying-up of the left side of my page. I took out the "Currently..." entries because I never remembered to update them, and if they'd be important enough to note I'd just talk about them in the log itself anyway. Instead, I put in a few weblog links. These are only some of the logs I visit, and they're not in any particular order of priority; I expect to continue working on this list in the future.

So here I am, back from AX, trying to wrap my brain around the concept of work. We *finally* got the transparency from the museum and were able to run it up to our designer for a record-breaking turn-around, which should hopefully result in the printer getting the film by Friday morning. Grr. We've now declared a moratorium on using images from the Met on our cover for at least the next three years. On the plus side, the inside proofs have gone down to the printer, so I feel justified in slacking off for the afternoon. Hence this entry, started at work, mailed to myself at home, and completed while typing over the cat's head.

AX was really cool. I got to hang out with all my friends that I only see once a year. I saw loads of really fabulous costumes, both during the Masquerade and just wandering around the con. And I got to be a pretentious git on the fanfiction panel. Hey, life is good. ^^

Some more random AX comments:

Other people I managed to see and/or hook up with briefly: Ankoku-jin, Ruthanne from the Good Fanfiction webring and her friend, whose name I unfortunately missed, Lady Quicksilver, and Miriya from CFFML. I didn't get to talk to any of you as much as I would have liked to, largely due to the fact that me and my various braincells were all rushing about in different directions and hence being even more scattered than usual. Overstimulated? Me? Nah.

I actually thought the two guys who were dressing up as Digi Charat and Sailor Moon characters were cute. Not cute as in bishounen cute, but it was obvious that they'd put a great deal of time and effort into their costumes, especially the Digi Charat ones, they seemed to be having a ball with it, and, let's face it, that took a lot of genkiness and guts. So more power to them.

Other costume highlights included an absolutely adorable group of CLAMP School Detectives, complete with Rijichou, Yaya Han's group's Miyuki-chan in Wonderland skit, not one but *two* Oruha/Suu entries in the Masquerade, a really neat pair of Fushigi Yuugi entries by a martial arts group (*loved* Tasuki's fan), and at least one very good Vash and Legato. (I don't think they were together, but they both looked great.) Sionna, K-chan, and Mandi won awards for their Magic Knight Rayearth costumes--yay! I do have to say that some people were less than cunning with their 'stumery, especially as regards its other-than-visual impact on other people. I'm sorry, but you probably do *not* want to haul your (very large) Cross Punisher into the jam-packed Dealers' Room. If you're going to wear big wings, pay attention to your swing room, or you're going to clock some unsuspecting fan in the head. And I have to feel rather sorry for the person sitting next to one of the Legatos in the audience at the Masquerade, who had to lean sideways to avoid having her head pierced by his shoulder spikes. You might want to think about what "theater seating" means, or you'll end up vastly amusing the people far away from you (like me), and annoying the ones right next to you.

And Max, the CG mascot, has to die. Not the person *playing* Max, mind you, who I know vaguely and who is actually quite cool, but a) the technology is not quite there yet, which meant that Max's realtime-rendered movements resembled someone spasming under the influence of demonic possession (especially when she was dancing) and b) I found her appearance between (and sometimes during!) Masquerade entries intrusive and frankly rather gratuitous and pointless. From the howls of dismay that were starting to greet her by midway through, I suspect I wasn't the only one. Though those might have been due to pain induced by her remarkably high-pitched giggling.

I did not see one single video during the con, other than a few music videos in some friends' room (go, HFP!) and during the Masquerade intermission, but I went to a panel or two and got a CCS pencilboard signed by the director of CCS and the director of the Kero-chan short from the second (?) movie. That was neat. I picked up lots of loot, of course. The Dealers' Room was immense and well-stocked. (There is already Chobits doujinshi--Japanese fans are fast. ^^) Note to people attending cons--price shop! There was an almost $20 difference between the highest price for the new Rg Veda artbook and what I actually paid for it.

Apparently there'll be an AX East in New York next year--according to rumor, it will take place during Labor Day weekend in Times Square. On the one hand--yeah! On the other hand--er, *Times Square?* I'm not sure the AX org realizes how expensive (and crowded) New York can be. But if it's here I'll go for at least one day. Also, there are mutterings about a CCS cosplay for the AX East Masquerade, which I might be involved in. Stay tuned. ^^

Switching cons, I'll be at Shoujocon this weekend. I know that some of the people who read this will be there; I hope we'll be able to hook up. I'm going to be on several panels, including the fanfiction one, and I also expect to be in the video room and at the "Pin the Head on the X Character" game. Look for the "N" on Saturday; on Sunday, I'll be wearing my airbrushed Weiss Kreuz T-shirt. If you see me huddled over an Apple laptop somewhere between panels, yes, I'm writing. (And if you see my hand swirling somewhat abstractly in midair, ask me what I'm working on and see if I blush. ^^)

Oh, yes--fanfiction. I need to comment about that too. ^^ "Falling" continues at a good pace. I actually got a bit done during AX. I've done the last of the cutaway scenes and will be returning to the main action tomorrow, after which I'm guessing that I'll have maybe two and a half, three pages to the end of the chapter. I just read Whitney R's fabulous "Compare and Contrast," though, which has given me an urgent yen to go back to my latest Omi x Aya story, which I started quite a while ago--yes, it's a sequel to "Sword Dance," in case I haven't already mentioned it here. ^^ So I'm making deals with myself. When I finish up chapter 17 of "Falling," I may allow myself a break to work on "Passion" for a while. (This is how the obsessive-compulsive author cozens herself along.) I've been out of the lemon mood for at least several weeks--I should probably grab for the joy while I've got it.

Speaking of lemons, this list, and the related discussions in people's logs, I might actually do a f1sting story at some point. Whatshername, who does the "Pucker Up" column in the Village Voice, did a piece on it, and it sounded intriguing. The question, of course, is who and in what continuity; of the two likeliest candidates in my head, one relationship has already been plotted out pretty tightly, and the other exists in a multitude of variations, all of which have a vast amount of backstory that ideally should come *before* the scene. Especially *this* scene, as the backstory explains why it's one character and not another that's involved. (Gee, can I be any more cryptic?) And there *was* r1mming in an early draft of "Youji's Omelette," but I cut it because the scene worked better with different choreography. Artistic integrity before p0rn.

And I'm sure that I've now horrified at least half my audience, and delighted the rest.

And I really should start linking to the various weblogs that I read. I'll probably do that sometime after Shoujocon. I'm also considering a minor redesign of my site, to coincide with the final release of "Falling."

Hmm, I was hoping to read the massive flood of hourfics on the CFFML tonight, but it's not going to happen before I have to go to bed. So I'll probably end up clearing the list next week. I have press inspection on Wednesday, which means I should have at least half of Thursday at home, so I can do it then. I *love* press inspection. I get paid to sit in a little room all day, drink Coke, write, and, oh yeah, go out to the press four times and approve the print run. ^^

And on this note of happiness, I'm off. (But you knew that.) See you at or after Shoujocon!

Sabina, I had the exact same train of thought once, re Weiss and Bubblegum Crisis. ^^ Though I had Youji corresponding to Priss, eartails or no, with Aya/Sylia as the cool, controlled, somewhat remote one. Ken, of course, ends up as Lina. (Linna? Dang, it's been a while since I watched those.)

Er, and while I'm at it--hi! ^_^;;;

Excuse me, that should've been Aztecs in my last post, not Toltecs. The Toltecs came earlier, and the Aztecs, who were inspired by and built upon Toltec culture, were the ones who sacrificed hearts to their sun god, Huitzilopochtli. Ah, typing Nahuatl words is so much fun. Huitzilopochtli. Xochipilli. Tezcatlipoca. I'm getting quite good at typing Tezcatlipoca. (I'd type it again, but doing so three times feels suspiciously like an invocation, and I'm pretty sure that I'm not looking for the influence of the Smoking Mirror in my life right now.) Anyway, my apologies for impugning the Toltecs. I'm two for two in my last couple of posts. ^^

I was going to give all of you--if there is an all of you reading this--a play-by-play account of N-chan's last day of work stress before leaving for July 4th and her AX vacation, but everything happened so quickly that I didn't have time. In short, we finally got the preliminary invoice for the image that we want to use on our cover. But! The invoice said that there was still paperwork to be done and that it would be a few more days before we actually got the transparency--which was a crisis, because our designer still has to design the dang thing and get film made, and the whole shebang has to be down to the printer by the morning of Friday the 13th. (The interior of the magazine is already there, thank-you-very-much, sent out on schedule last Friday. :P) So this morning was all phone calls as I tried to figure out exactly when we would be getting the image and exactly how much time the designer needed to do his thing and whether the sum of those two spans of time would be less than the time between now and Friday the 13th. In the end, the transparency is supposed to be ready for pick up on Tuesday morning, our designer groaned and made great cuts in his schedule and has promised to have it for us by Thursday, and I'm crossing my fingers. Of course, need I mention that our art researcher, who usually handles this kind of thing, is away on vacation until the 16th? Our scheduling for the cover *always* sucks. This time it just sucks worse than usual.

On the plus side, the day is otherwise quite dead. The only thing I really have to do is finish putting together the piece on Quetzalcoatl so that the editor can read it when he comes in on Friday; other than that, I can slack off. Which I am. Couldn't you tell? :P

And now it's almost the end of the day, and I'm about to dash out the door, leap on the early train (I hope), rush home, wolf dinner, and try to make the 7:00 showing of A.I. with Sheri. Hopefully getting a bit more done on "Falling" during the train ride. ^^ Ja ne!

Argh. I meant Tamura-san's *family* name in my last post, not his given name. <smite smite>

I've bogged down a little bit in "Falling" because I've hit a point of high melodrama, and I need to whack at it as I write to make sure that it's not *too* overwrought. I think, though, that if I can just get through this one section of Rin speaking, matters should improve, particularly because Jinpachi gets the spotlight next, and Jinpachi is such a totally anti-ponderous character. Ensemble cast pieces are a lot of fun--they're hard, of course, because it's a challenge to write a scene with more than three or four characters in it and not have at least some of them standing around like furniture, while at the same time making sure that you're not just stiffly listing off what everybody's doing, and that all of their actions and speech flow together in a way that reflects both the ongoing events and each character's unique perception of them. When it all comes together, though, it's a trip. And one of the things I really like about this last chapter is that *everybody* gets to do something. Admittedly, Tamura-san doesn't actually *accomplish* much, but he's still present and important to the story. Heck, even a couple of the secondary characters get the POV briefly. (What can I say? Hajime and Mikuro's brother just kind of snuck in there. ^^)

And *augh!*--I am NOT writing a Tokyo Babylon/PSME crossover fic! The idea gradually percolated to the surface of my mind after I found out that Mikuro's brother's name is apparently Hokuto. Two Hokutos with brothers whose special powers set them apart from ordinary people--I'm sure the parallels are more than obvious.

I am also not writing (hopefully ^^;;;) the fic idea that came to me today, which involves jaguars, mystical visions of the quincunx, and Subaru getting sacrificed on the Shinken's blade. This is what happens when I have to key in an article on ancient Mesoamerican mythology. Ah, yes, the Toltecs--giving "hearts and flowers" a whole new meaning. :P Which is why I've always maintained that Seishirou spent at least part of the time between Tokyo Babylon and "Sakura" in Mexico, and probably traveled throughout Central and South America as well. (Well, maintained it to myself and a few close associates, since I think this is the first time I've said anything publicly about it. It's not as though it's really relevant to the "Sakura" storyline anyway. ^^) Dark jungles filled with the scents of exotic, night-blooming flowers, ancient temples stained with the blood of hearts torn out in sacrifice--c'mon, it's a Sakurazukamori vacation extravaganza. :P

The Cloverzukamori, on the other hand, is probably hanging out in my backyard right now. We've got loads of the little three-leafs all over the place.

Argh. So it's been a while since I've posted to this, but I just did a tiny little update to my fic site (mainly linkage things), so I thought I'd better drop a line here too, so people know I'm not dead yet. Maiko-chan was in and out of kitty hospitals all last week with recurrent vomiting. She's home now, but still under the weather--I suspect at least in part due to having all kinds of horrible medicine inflicted upon her. So as you can imagine, I've been a little distracted.

My mails to a number of my Chinese correspondents have been bouncing. Two of them said "no route to source"; the other was "content rejected". I wonder if anybody else has been having trouble getting mail through to sina.com and 163.com, or whether it's just my provider. In any case, Oui Apapa, if you're reading this, thanks for letting me know about the translations. I'm very flattered! And I've put up the links you requested. Please keep me informed if you do any other translations in the future; I'd be glad to link to those as well.

Hady and Cleric, I've just posted my mails to you as text pages. Just click on the links. (I'm afraid they might be a little discombobulated; they bounced back to me a while ago, and I didn't really do much editing to update them. ^^;;;;) It's so embarrassing, I'm such a bad correspondent anyway, but this time it's not even my fault!

In other news, chapter 17 of "Falling" continues apace. Actually, I got a *lot* done on it today, probably because I've hit what's largely an action/drama sequence, which often require less agonizing over than the deep character exploration bits. Chapter 16 was the angst chapter; though chapter 17 has angst too (including some Hiragi angst, of all things), it's more about stuff going boom. Or not. Which reminds me that I need to ship the techie chapters over to Yumemi one of these days to make sure I haven't screwed anything up. ^^ I think I'll probably do that when I enter the major revision period, after I finish up 17 and the epilogue.

And oh yes, there's going to be a lot of revising. I went back and read some of the earlier chapters a little while ago, and while I think they hold up remarkably well for having been written five years ago, there's a few things that need tweaking. One thing I'm definitely going to have to take a close look at, for instance, is name consistency. You think it's bad trying to keep track of who calls who what in ordinary anime/manga fanfics, what with levels of honorifics and people using family or given names--try it when most of your main cast also has past life names, used with or without honorifics. And different characters use different combinations of names depending on who they're talking to and what's going on in the story. For instance, Issei starts off by calling Rin "Rin-kun." (At least, he *should*; I messed up in chapter 1 and didn't use the honorific there, because I didn't know as much then as I do now.) He switches over to "Shion-san" in chapter 6 and continues using the "-san" for as long as he's being ingratiating, finally dropping it by the end of chapter 11. Then somewhere at the end of the story he switches back to "Rin-kun." Now try that with *seven* different people all addressing each other. Uh huh.

And I have to decide at some point if I'm going to change Tamura over to "Kazuto" when I'm writing from his POV. I mean, honestly the man wouldn't think of himself by his given name. But...but...he's /Tamura-san!/

Tamura-san!
He's our man!
If he can't do it, nobody can!
LET'S--MAKE--LUNCH!

And with the official Tamura-san Fan Club cheer, I'm going to bed. 'Night, all.

So I managed to post the weekly CFFML admin chatter *and* update my site last night. Huzzah for me! But I forgot the one really important thing that I wanted to include in my update mailing, which is this: if there's a "Falling from the Moon" reader out there with medical knowledge, I'm looking for someone to beta-read a brief excerpt from an upcoming chapter. Yup, it's the vaccine bit. I haven't actually written it yet, but it's in the scene I'm working on now. If anyone feels up to the task, please email me.

I also got to watch the end of Trigun this weekend *possible spoiler alert!*, and I can now report that Legato is definitely a psychopathic freakshow, and I don't think I need one of those for my collection. A pity, as otherwise he's quite scenic. I do really like the series, although it didn't quite do what I expected at the end. What it did was fine, just not what I would have done, which would have been something along the lines of Vash throwing away his gun and asking Knives to forgive him for that first shooting, and then a big emotional teary moment of "we really don't want to fight each other but we still oppose each other," culminating in Vash making a bet with Knives: the two of them will spend x number of years living among humans, and if Vash can't convince Knives of the beauty of the human spirit, he won't stand in his brother's way anymore. And then it would be love, peace, and donuts, and Knives would end up with Milly. I guess this is the difference between shounen and shoujo right there.

Or maybe this is just the way my cracked brain operates. ^^

But it's a cool show, and I think the only reason I'm not more obsessed with it is that it echoes things I go for in other series, but doesn't quite hit my hot buttons. For instance, it doesn't seem to have the extreme obsessive "love that endures despite everything that stands between us," except maybe between Vash and his brother, and then it's not *that* kind of love, at least not for me. I'm a Vash/Meryl 'shipper, I have to admit, but overall I just don't get a slashy vibe from this show. I really like Wolfwood, but he doesn't smack me in the head and insist that I pair him up with anybody. (I am rather pleased with myself, though, that I figured out his spoiler just minutes before they came out and told us. <preen>) And as I mentioned before, Legato is awfully attractive and smooth, but he strikes me as being most likely to pair up with Knives, and then it's Knives and Legato and Vash's left hand and--ick-squick-SQUICK. So we *won't* go there.

Perhaps this near-miss interest is why my mind keeps trying to cross this series over with other series that *do* obsess me. Like, god forbid, Weiss Kreuz, despite the insane distance of time and space between them. Believe it or not, it was actually almost working for a while, though it relied on my AU "dragon" storyline to combine the two. (Have I babbled about this in my log yet? I can't remember. Well, in short, Omi's great-grandmother [I think--the woman who kept the Takatori family going through WWII and who Omi's grandfather is obsessed with ^^] had dragon ancestry, and random bad guys kidnap Omi to wake the dragon blood and use his power for Evil.<TM> However, stupid bad people don't take into account the fact that you've first got to *control* the dragon. Omi breaks free and squishes them, and eventually learns to master his dragon form and various powers, which include the ability to transit outer space.) The premise was that there was war in the celestial hierarchy over Omi, who on the one hand is part-human, and on the other is apparently supposed to be some sort of draconic messiah. So to stop the fighting he makes a desperate escape across the universe with the other Weiss guys, his and Ken's part-dragon son (*don't* ask), Schuldig, and a female dragon cousin who was originally in romantic pursuit of Aya while being pursued by Youji, but whose affections are beginning to slide toward Schuldig. (As you can see, I have a predilection for love polygons. I'm sure you can also see why I would never in a million years write this.) And they all end up on the Trigun planet. The tie-in, which will make sense to those of you who've seen to the end of Trigun, lies in conceiving of dragons as being primarily energy-beings rather than physical creatures. Dragon = elemental force of nature. Vash = typhoon. Yup, it all makes perfect sense to me. ^^

In any case, Vash is now wandering around inside my head tear-streaming and wailing "Kowai yo!! It's scary in here!!" and I suppose I can't really blame him, even if he *is* going to be spared the worst of my angsty slashy love storylines. If nothing else, he's going to have to share the place with Seishirou and Rin.

As well as the occasional bishounen dance party....

I finished the scene! Not only did I finish that scene, I finished the second one, and have already started working on the third. And after that, the chapter is over, and then there's basically only one more chapter until the story's done. My god, I might actually finish "Falling" this year!

In other news, I sent in my registration for AX and Shoujocon. And I'm going to be on the fanfiction panel at Shoujocon--maybe I'll see some of you hypothetical readers there. I'm heading off tomorrow to my college reunion for a weekend--please god--without internet access.

If my head doesn't explode first, of course.

I really hate being shrill and judgmental on the CFFML. Heck, I thought I was being a bit too noisy and intrusive when I was just posting my semi-weekly welcomes and rules-pokes. ^_^ To everyone who's sent me encouraging messages, I truly do appreciate them, and I hope to thank you all more personally when I get back. (That sounds a bit wrong, but rest assured that I mean it in the most platonic sense. ^^)

Well, at least this mess and other RL hecticness hasn't had any adverse impact on my writing yet. I have over two hours of train commute every day, which is inviolate writing time, and I think that's saving me.

It *is* wreaking absolute havoc on my already much-wreaked email correspondence, though

*sigh*

Wow, two entries in as many days! *choke gasp* But I had to celebrate because I Finished. That. Paragraph. Finally! Of course, it's ponderous and wordy and contains much suckage at the moment, but all of that can be fixed (hopefully) in a future draft. For now I rejoice simply in being able to get on to the main point of this scene--not that Jinpachi's maunderings were pointless, but it's what they've been leading up to that's important. (And as a side note, you know that you're anal retentive when you find yourself worrying about undershirt continuity.)

And I'm particularly fluffy today, because last night Sheri did my hair up into many, many interwoven little braids, which took me at least ten minutes to undo this morning. I'm not complaining, though, because for one thing I like being fluffy, and for another it kept me from actually rolling around on the floor last night during the "dance of joy" scene in Angel.

Oops, the other computer's free. Time to fix the javascript.

Well, my overall mood has improved--I'm actually pretty cheerful--but I'm still suffering from a really bad case of email burn-out, so everyone who's waiting for answers will have to wait at least a few days more. I did want to say thanks, though, to all the people who wrote to me about my kitty. I really appreciate your thoughts.

We've got another cat now--what, already? Yup. (It was necessary: every day when I came home from work, the first thing out of Dad's mouth was, "We've gotta get another cat." ^^) Anyway, Maiko-chan is a chibi black panther with really big ears and a splash of white over her heart, and she's a total love-bug and lap-hogger. Makes trying to work on the computer interesting, to say the least.

Chapter 15 of "Falling" is in prereading now, and I'm working on chapter 16. I may actually be about to get out of this paragraph that I've been stuck in for the last three days. I have only one thing to say about it, which is that revelation is a bitch. Especially when it's in Jinpachi's POV. Oy.

And finally, in my continuing attempt to escape from my email (j/k), I spent part of this weekend installing OSX onto one partition of my computer, which was highly amusing. I have evil plans for the screen saver. And contrary to what MacAddict claims, the pulsating blue buttons inspire neither serenity nor "frothing brain hemorrhages" in me. On the other hand, no longer having an application menu gave me fits.

I guess that's it for right now. Time to go off and do some work so I can be a bad cat later....

So I'm back from Japan--the trip was great, lots of fun, everything went very well. I'll probably do some kind of journal of it once I've finished recovering.

In sadder news, my cat died earlier this week. I've made a little memorial page for her. It's kind of rough still, but maybe I'll polish it up later, when I've got a bit more distance.

And I've finally finished chapter 15 of "Falling," which will be going out for prereading shortly. I'd been planning to work on trying to finish that story, but at the moment I honestly don't know what I'm going to write next. Most of my current ideas are lemon fics, but I'm not really in the mood to write lemons.

More--and more cheerful stuff, I hope--later.