New fic, for those of you who read this that aren't on my mailing list. Thanks for the plug, as well as the beyond-spiffy artwork. Eeee.

Late last week, I was working on "Sakura," and I finally wrote one of the lines that I've been waiting for five years to write. That's a weird feeling. Good, but weird. ^_^ There's all this *stuff* that's been very completely planned out for that story, and has been for what seems like forever, and finally taking it out of the mental closet and putting it down on the screen is...I don't know what it's like. Part of it, I guess, is that I've been living with this story for so long that I'm like, what, haven't I been here before? Doesn't *everybody* know this scene already? (FWIW, the original set-up for the line in question was in chapter 2. Here I am at the payoff, fourteen chapters later. ^^) At the same time, I've got more distance from the story now than I did then. So in a way, I feel like I'm standing slightly behind myself, watching a younger or alternate universe me writing the story.

Or maybe I'm just feeling deja vu because I'm back in the land of Seishirou-molesting-Subaru. (I know I've seen *this* part before. ^^;;;)

In a more serious vein, a good friend of mine recently had one of her stories posted without her permission on ff.net. The perpetrator apparently didn't even attempt to file off the serial numbers and pretend to make the fic her own--she basically posted it as is, saying that she didn't know who the fic was by, but since it was old it was probably all right. Um, *no.* If there's anybody who reads this journal who would actually consider doing something like that, I have only one thing to say: BAD. Don't do it.

Gee, could I be any more useless at work today?

A friend just passed me this link: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/01/1036027033529.html. Hey, cool--a decent article about fanfiction!

So I finished sorting the flat files, finding a lot of interesting stuff along the way (including a bunch of transparencies by the photographer Minor White), and also a whole lot of crap. Literally. The bottom drawer had been stuck open, and the mousies had been in and all about it. They *peed* on the art. Oh, the humanity. At least none of the pictures actually got damaged; they were all covered by onionskin, so I just tore off the covering sheets and threw them away. Now at last everything is sorted and organized and labeled. Go me.

I'm in the process of rereading "Sakura and Snow" so as to get back up to speed for starting work on it again. I've said it before, but I'll say it again: chapters 7-9 need to be beaten with a stick. Grrr. But I'm not fixing them now. With some luck, I might actually get back to working on the next Drift by this weekend, although I'm feeling a little bit blocked on it, mainly because I'm not really in a lemony mode, and we're *right* in the middle of being plotless and gratuitous. Well, sooner or later the mood will be right again....

And now I have to go off and type manuscripts.

Oh, sure, her knowledge is mysterious, but that's exactly the point--in the sub, it's mysterious ("Haku!...wait, that's Haku? How did I know that?"), whereas in the dub it was merely inexplicable ("Oh, look, there's Haku, tra la la.") Or maybe that's just how I perceived it.

So yesterday I descended upon one corner of our office, long buried under piles of old printer's mechanicals and empty computer boxes, with intention to clean, since we're about to acquire a new filing cabinet and have nowhere to put it. To let you know how bad it was, at the bottom of the pile I found a mouse skeleton. At first I thought it was just lint or straw or something, but then I accidentally stepped on it and it went *crunch.* So Shanti and I looked more closely, and sure enough, there were tiny little mousie feet and itty-bitty mousie vertebrae. Poor wee sleekit cow'ring beastie....

The PSME/Spirited Away/X daydream storyline meandered a little further, but then bogged down, probably because I don't really have any idea for how to resolve the X conflict in this situation, and so I couldn't see anything ahead but random combat sequences. There were some cool bits, though--Mikuro turning up and teaming with Rin against Fuuma; Fuuma waking the dragon-lines beneath Sunshine 60 and using their power to turn Nataku into an extra-Large Earth Dragon, after which he building-hops off to go after Alice while everyone else is locked in battle; Rin screaming across Issei's telepathic bond to get him to stop Alice (who's on a train heading toward the battle scene) and to call Haru to help protect her (alas, poor Haru gets his butt kicked by Fuuma); Alice quietly facing off against Fuuma, standing in a ring of flying small birds, seagulls, and Tokyo's crows that have flown to protect her--and he can't touch her, due to their wish, and to her own, which is to protect Rin and to keep him from being hurt because of her. And then Rin turns up (and Issei and Sakura, though there's not really a whole lot they can do), and Haru recovers, and Chihiro and Haku appear with a slightly restored Kamui (since the other Seals had arrived to help deal with Dragon-Nataku), and Fuuma decides that these odds are not very palatable after all. Suddenly he dissolves in a swirl of sakura--in a dark place, he turns to face his rescuer.

"You're welcome," Seishirou says cheerfully.

And that's where I stopped.

Errr...I didn't really mean to post so much of this.

So I finally managed to get the DiVX thing to work and watch the copy of Spirited Away that you sent me, and I actually have to say that the dub version is on the whole reasonably good. Chihiro sounds a bit more childish than in the original Japanese, and Haku is a touch less yasashii, but not bad, not bad. They only really cacked up one thing [spoiler here] : you know when Sen is going back to the bath house after Haku took her to see her parents and fed her, and she looks up and sees the dragon flying in the distance? In the dub, we hear her say something like "A dragon? Haku's a dragon?"--which made me at least come to a screeching halt, going, "Wait a minute, how the *heck* does she know that's Haku?" And her mysterious knowledge is never addressed. So we totally lose the effect of that moment later on the balcony when she calls to Haku-the-Dragon for the first time and then wonders about it. Grr.

In other news, I finally sent the Weiss boys packing. Oh, not forever, I'll get back together with them eventually, but they really were taking up too much of the brain cell for what had come to be very little return. In their absence, I've had a resurgence of other character voices, including Subaru and Seishirou (and Hokuto-chan...*fear*), who've been absent for way too long, as well as, surprisingly, the PSME gang. Which has led to the crack-filled but actually rather neat crossover idea of PSME/Spirited Away. Chihiro is going to college. Haku is strangely fascinated by a certain landscaper's singing, and Chihiro is jealous. Rin, just hitting puberty, is also jealous. Wackiness and mortal danger to passersby ensue. (It's not really as silly as this sounds, btw, nor as violent, since everyone pretty much has their head on straight by this point and can handle things like reasonable adults.)

Of course, this then led to the even more on-crack crossover of PSME/Spirited Away/X, which is definitely not going to happen, but is amusing. At the last point I'd gotten to, Chihiro is yelling at Fuuma on top of the not-yet-fallen Sunshine 60, Haku, in dragon-form, is going, oh, crap, the end of the world is NOW?, Rin is freaked out because Fuuma knows his wish and he's got a really bad feeling about this, and Kamui is angsting. And bleeding. Gee, big surprise. Oh, and Subaru just turned up, but hasn't yet raised his kekkai.

Can you tell that it's a really slow day at work?

Baby Sakurazukamori...*twitch* *twitch* I am now picturing a giant Seishirou-baby, like the kid from Spirited Away. Oh, well, just as long as his mother doesn't come and pay me a visit.

And Mailsmith, *why* are you locking up on me again? Do you really want me to lose that long message I just finished composing? *growl*

(Actually, I suspect that this is the gods' way of telling me that running a PBeM is more than enough--I definitely shouldn't be joining one as well. Okay, okay. I get the message.)

Ooh! I almost forgot. During my trip a couple of weeks ago, while hitting every used and new book store in every town I stopped in, I found a copy of The Catalpa Bow. Research material! *glee* I also picked up a dictionary of Japanese Buddhist terms, which would probably be more useful for the translators out there, but is nonetheless very interesting.

In general I bought *way* too many books. I have to start reading some of the books on my "to be read" shelf, before it collapses, sending Amy's picture of Narsus (which also lives there) plummeting to an untimely end.

A much better mood emerges, finally. The writing has started up again, though it's still going in unpredictable directions, I bit the bullet at last and launched my D&D PBeM game, and generally things are good.

The only sad thing is that last weekend we had to cut down my baby sakura tree. Unfortunately, we were stupid and planted it much too close to the house, and it was already starting to encroach on the living room windows. And it would have cost over a thousand dollars to move it somewhere else, so we just couldn't. *sniffle* But we'll get a new one in the spring, and plant it someplace more cunning.

And now I suppose I should get back to doing work-type things....

Today I just discovered that I've lost a section of one of the fanfics I was working on. I suspect it was the conjunction of the program I use to sync files between my desktop and laptop and a bad date setting on one of the machines. At any rate, the text is gone, and it looks like the glitch happened *before* I made my most recent backup, because that's missing the section too. Argh. *cries* It's for one of the WK long fics that I've been fiddling with for a while now, a fair-sized chunk of Schuldig 'n' Crawford exposition and an almost done scene of Omi angst. And while intellectually I know that I'm over-reacting and that I'll be able to rewrite those parts eventually, to the heart it's like the destruction of a small world. The way my writing has been going recently....

Tomorrow I'll be going out of town for a few days, a trip that's part work-related and part pilgrimage. Maybe I'll find some clarity along the Thruway.

So Technomancy have closed down and dissolved their entity-ness. It's the end of era. End of several eras, actually. Circles and memes and obsessions come and go, and here I am, still sitting in my corner, gone slightly to seed, muttering disconnectedly to myself.

I feel old. ^^

It occurs to me, looking back at the last entry, that some people might take offense. What I meant was not that fanfics about black lesbians were weird, but that it was weird that the searcher had ended up on my site, which, while not excusively yaoi-centric, is nonetheless largely lesbian-free. (If I ever get around to writing the story about Kamui's mother that I've been meaning to do for the last couple of years, that might change.)

And to the person who emailed me: while I'm admittedly a Mac suprematist, I don't get involved in Mac/PC wars. There's just no point. Nobody ever changed their mind while being argued at; if people are going to convert, they'll do it by trying out the machine for themselves and deciding that it suits them better. And if it doesn't, then they won't. Life will go on.

Speaking of which, I really dislike the new Apple "Switch" ads. For crying out loud, just show the computers and what they can do (and not in an annoying way, like that ad with the guy taking up three seat tables on the airplane) instead of letting random twitchy people babble at us. (No, I didn't like the Jeff Goldblum ads either.) The only noticeable effect of these commercials that I can see is that PC makers have stopped politely ignoring Apple's existence and have started taking potshots back. This is progress?

For the second time in a week, I've gotten an email from someone who claims to work for a shopping web site and who would love to have more information about a product offered on my web site (www.firecat.net/fanfics/sakura/sakura07.html).

...would somebody mind telling me exactly what I'm selling in chapter 7 of "Sakura"? I mean, really. There's not even any smut in that chapter.

And to the person who found my site while looking for "fanfics about black lesbians," my apologies for your disappointment. (I have to admit, I was really wondering where the lesbians were on my site. I finally found them in chapter 4 of X Rocky. You know, it's always Shanti's chapters of X Rocky that give me the weirdest search engine hits....)

And in the mad frenzy of updating, I forgot to include in the author's note to "Return" my major big thanks to K-chan, whose musing about Sorata's parents was the whole reason I wrote this fic in the first place. <bangs head against monitor in penance> Will fix that as soon as I have a moment alone with the FTP program.

And may I just add that having internet access on my main computer at work is playing hell with my productivity.

Mailsmith filter stupidity has been conquered. CFFML mail is now trundling obediently into its designated mailbox. I repeat, go me.

Hah. I *said* that I would. And I did. Go me.

And she rises from the region of thud with a mighty blargh. BLAAAAARGH!!

<listens to crickets chirping>

As for AXNY, it was very cool--well, inasmuch as I actually saw any of the con, since I spent most of my time being sucked into the Masquerade and its preparations. Speaking of which...um, we won! Everything! ^_^;;; And we got on CNN too, as part of a segment on News Night with Aaron Brown highlighting the convention. It was the most amazing experience. (The Masquerade itself, I mean, not being on CNN, which was neat but kind of unreal. My god, unknown thousands (millions?) of people have now seen me running around a stage in that gold bodysuit.) We had actually rehearsed our skit beforehand, so nobody stepped on anyone's train, or got their hair tangled up with somebody else's, it was a nice, big stage so we got to dance and swoop around freely, and all the other cosplayers we talked to were *so* nice. Mad props to them, and to the very kind lady who let me borrow her velcro glue to fasten down my headpiece (I ended up gluing it to my eyebrows, but at least it didn't fall off all day), and to the judges, who were incredibly cool, especially Darrell.

If anybody's wondering what we looked like, you can see us on Fan's View here, with closer shots of some of us here (though Fight's wig wasn't done at this point) and here. If and when Sionna gives me permission, I'll also link to her screen caps from the CNN broadcast. Things the pictures don't really do justice to include Fight's hair, boot tops, and gloves, all of which stayed in place while she threw punches and kicks and chased me around the stage, the immense crinolines under Flower and Silent's dresses (Sionna alone took up three seats backstage), and the multitude of hand-cut and glitter-glued fabric leaves making up Wood's mantle and vines. The culmination of three months' work and last-minute insanity. ^_^

Also, I got your package--thank you! More when I finally get around to emailing you. Sorry I didn't pick up any Sen to Chihiro stuff for you; but I only really got into the dealers' room once, since Saturday it was a madhouse and Sunday was eaten by cosplay, and I didn't really know what you already had and what you wanted. Better luck next time. ^_^

Web site update this weekend! For real! I mean it this time! And nothing shall stand in my way!

(a virtual bishounen to anyone who knows who I'm quoting above ^_^)

In about an hour, I'll be leaving for AXNY. If you're going to be there, look for me in the Masquerade, since that's pretty much all I'll be doing all weekend. After that, you can probably expect some more thud for at least another week, and then I might actually manage to update my site with some stuff. (Yes, I know, famous last words. I'm still hopeful, however.)

<rereads last entry> Oh, yes--as you can see, my computer's back, and has been for quite a while. I love the Apple Store.

FYI, if anybody's trying to reach me, Velvet is in the shop getting his Firewire ports fixed and will gone for up to ten days. I can kinda sorta check email from work via my ISP's webmail page, but it's slow, and spam keeps pushing me over my message quota, and I'm reluctant to do too much replying because I'm one of those thoroughly retentive types who likes to organize all her answered mail in little folders, and I have no little folders. (I suppose I could make new ones, but oh, the headache of reconsolidating....) Anyway, if it's an emergency I'll probably see it and answer, but otherwise I'll be somewhat incommunicado for a while.

I'm actually hoping to manage an update to my site once I get Velvet back--not so much fic, alas, though I do have one to post (no, not "Sakura," sorry), as it is little bits and pieces of data and sundry link-tidying. And fan art! I've been showered with fabulous fan art recently, and I need to share it with the hypothetical you out there.

And now I must be productive for a bit. Especially since my boss is waiting to use this computer.

Oh, btw, the artist who did the Omi-neko picture that I got has a site here: yueki.net. Her fan art site is down at the moment, but Kristin, lookee here! It's Haku!

And I agree with her opinion of Omi and Youji's new character designs. Blech!

About time you posted--I was starting to wonder if you were still on a plane somewhere. ^^

So I've made it back from both AX West and Shoujocon, and I'm only moderately crunchy--as in a state of mild mental shutdown rather than running around in circles wailing and gibbering. So that's all right. (It's actually less to do with any stresses surrounding the conventions, which were themselves fairly relaxing, than the sheer weight of things I ought to be doing Right Now and am not.)

Anyway, Shoujocon was fun. I got lost in the parking garage and missed the CLAMP discussion group, but I managed to make it to the fanfic discussion group and the fanfic panel on Friday. I actually made it onto the panel, even though I wasn't officially supposed to be--the concom had emailed me two days before the con to ask if I wanted to be on any panels, but since from the web site it had looked as though everything that I knew anything about was going to be discussion groups, not panels, I declined. But then a couple of the panelists from last year recognized me, and since the panel wasn't quite larger than the audience, they invited me to join. Not that anything really new got discussed--it was pretty much the standard fanfic panel fare--and I felt kind of bad for the two GW fanfickers in the middle of the table who got steamrollered by the older, more vocal participants, but somehow I still like doing the panel thing. Being the voice of sanity and experience, I guess. (Okay, you all can stop snickering now.)

At the fanfic discussion group on Friday night, I got fangirled by Destra, Skuld-chan, and Ali-chan, who were all very kawaii. (My apologies if I've gotten any of your names wrong; I was in a mild state of mental fog for much of the weekend.) Afterward I finally managed to hook up with Kristen, who'd been stuck on the runway for four hours in Chicago and hence was a bit late, and Meg-san, got into the hotel room at last, and then shortly went thud. That was pretty much Friday, other than shopping. Saturday's highlights included more shopping; the adult fanfic panel, where we got to glimpse the Technomancy crew in passing and Kristin got her turn to be fangirled; music videos--if you can find "Shuichi's Question" (or "Suichi's Question," as it's spelled in the video itself) online somewhere, definitely watch it; the shounen ai love-in (for most blatant use of a telephone pole); and in general getting to hang out with the WA crew. I also spent most of the day harrassing the art show staff with stupid questions because I was desperate to bid on something and paranoid that I was going to screw it up somehow.

Finally, Sunday featured yet more shopping; shounen ai day (Mirage of Blaze was kind of interesting, in an almost but not quite CLAMPy way); many cries of "Save Ken!" as Tet-chan's chibi-Ken pin made a valiant attempt to leap to his death on the dealer's room floor; a little bit of elk molestation; and my ultimate triumph--making off with the catboy Omi picture from the Art Show. Niyao! ^_^ Then Kristin came home with me, we watched some Fruits Basket, and that was the end of the weekend. Despite the number of times shopping came up, I didn't actually come away with bushels of stuff; it was more a case of many moderately sized acquisitions, including a couple of pencil boards, the Gravitation art book, the complete set of Angelic Layer, one Weiss dj, and some DVDs. The dj dealers seemed to have very little other than Youji/Omi, which is ironically way down on my scale of prefered Weiss pairings, but I found a cute-ish gag one that featured a chibi-neko-Omi picture, so I was happy. Anyway, I cleaned up on djs at AX West, so I didn't mind.

Speaking of AX West, here's the very brief run-down of that con:

*The AMV showing was a train wreck due to technical difficulties and annoyed fans, although the staff ended up handling things well, and the alternate showings (at least the one that I saw) came off fine. I rather liked the Angelic Layer video; I did *not* like the X/South Park one, though it might have helped if I'd been able to make out any of the lyrics.

*The Masquerade went much better. The school marching band dressed in FF costumes and playing an FF medley was an oustanding opening act. K-chan, Sionna, and their friend Aimee started off the competitive costumes with their "Gals of Final Fantasy," which got a good audience response, making me very happy. (When I have friends in Masquerades, I'm always more nervous than they are. ^^) Other highlights included Sionna's friends the Stitchin' Babes doing a little soft-shoe as Noin and Relena, many, many dancing mechs, a bishounen dance group featuring an awfully nice male Ken, and the Best-in-Show-winning Vampire Hunter D group.

*Boatloads of very good costumes in general. The standard at AX is extremely high. Of course, there were also a few "oh, god, no" moments, like the male Faye Valentine....

*Much more shopping, including some nice djs (Kazuya/Fujimaru from Reideen, more of Tokyo Rox's Ken books), the Fruits Basket character book, and yet more pencil boards. The lines for the dealers' room got a bit annoying, and I got sunburned on Sunday and then whined about it for most of the rest of the day. ^^

*Failing to see the Escaflowne movie for the third year in a row. I think it must be my destiny to see it with Shanti, so I'm hoping that AX NY will finally be the day.

*Generally getting to hang around with the people that I see only once a year.

And that is the con report for now. Next up, AXNY on Labor Day weekend! When you all (or whoever actually goes to the con) can see me run around like a complete idiot onstage as Windy, with more wings and feathers and hair than any one person needs!

As for this weblog, I'm still trying to figure out if there's much point to squeaking in it every two months or so, or if my limited energies would be better spent elsewhere. If you don't hear from me until after AXNY, though, it's a pretty safe bet that I've gone *thud* in a corner again.

Yo. I continue not to be dead. Just very, very brain-fried. I've done a smidge of writing, and may post something to my site in a week or two--not "Sakura," alas, although I've actually been inspired for that recently. Just no time. Grr. I'm heading out tomorrow for AX West, and when I come back maybe I'll finally manage to bring this log back to life. (If people are looking for me at AX, erm, I'll be around. I'm not on the fanfic panel this year, but I might attend it, depending on what else is happening.) I'm also going to be doing Shoujocon and AXNY this year, so it's entirely possible that my brain will continue to be fried until early September--er, wait, 9/11 anniversary, better make that mid- to late September. Your patience is greatly appreciated. ^_^

Just swept my guestbook, removing some duplicate posts and things that looked a whole heck of a lot like ads, and instituted a shiny new "no ads" policy. (Whoever came up with the bright idea that generic "Interesting site!" posts in people's guestbooks were a cool way to get traffic to porn sites needs to have a circle in hell dedicated especially to them. Blargh.) I still need to archive some of the oldest posts, since the page is getting a bit long, but that will have to wait for another day.

I need to write, too, come to think of it. :P But that also is waiting for another day, as I'm head-down in a very large editing project right now, and I can't focus on both that and breaking out of the writer's block. Still, have been having some good ideas for things, so at least I'm getting closer.

(Have also been having scary "second generation" daydreams again. But we won't talk about those.)

And you should definitely come to Shoujocon. I shouldn't, but probably will anyway. (It's practically in my backyard. how can I *not*?) Three anime cons this summer. My head may just explode.

Just a quick note to say: Yo, not dead here. I've been in a region of serious thud for the past couple of months--I still sort of am, but I'm starting to think every now and then about emerging. I've been working on "Sakura"--*slowly,* very, very slowly, so don't get your hopes up too high yet--and a couple of other things, but for the most part I'm still rather burnt-out and crunchy. So, not wanting to push too hard and maybe drive the muses away for good, I've been noodling around with other stuff--a little D&D, mostly, that and looking for a new obsession that'll give me good daydream storylines without compelling me to write for it. Because lord knows, I have enough writing to do already.

Anyway, I'm kind of not following weblogs very much right now, so email is a better way to communicate, if anybody feel the need. Otherwise, I think I'm going to continue to hermit for a little while longer.

Here's hoping that I'll feel more inspired once the sakura actually start blooming.... ^_^