College

Yes, I am that old. And if you want to know how much of a nerd I am, I'm majoring in Computer Science with double minors in Mathematics and Writing.

Although honestly if my school offered a writing/creative wring major, I probably would have double majored in that.

Anyway, back to the "daily grind" of school means that I am doing a lot (and I mean a lot) of reading. Seriously. When you go to college, everyone will be like "yeah, join a lot of clubs!" or "take classes you think you even might be interested in!" or "make friends with everyone!" or something like that. My advice: don't spend the summer forgetting how to read academically. Seriously. I did that, and I keep hitting walls in this first week of class because I forget how to read critically/mark up text/etc.

Oh, more advice: write all over everything, as much as you possibly can. And remember, you own your books (if you're like me and went to a public school, this is new and different). That means you won't get in trouble for writing on your books. (I mean, don't do it on the ones you take out of the library.) Seriously. I've never been a huge history person and even though I've only so far done one reading for history, I wrote all over my book (which I got for six dollars*) and it's already helped me remember stuff from it.

*More advice: I'm going to guess that when you find the books you need for a class, you'll be provided with an ISBN. (If not, google should give you one.) I would definitely search by ISBN when looking for your book online, because the ISBN of different editions of the same book is different. And if you're lucky like me, you'll find somewhere that is selling a lightly used textbook for $6 including shipping. Of course, you need luck. But hey, I don't think I normally have any :)

So that was just a bunch of random side notes. Basically I just wanted to say I'm reading interesting stuff. (But you know me, I ramble.) So, you might see some interesting new ideas floating around, say, my figment account.

New Fandom + New Ship

So. Who's seen the awesomeness that is Avengers?

If you haven't, don't look, although you might be safe. I wouldn't risk it if I were you.

So, first of all, ohymgod was it amazing. So well writing, such perfect dialogue. Although, honestly, what else would you expect from Joss Whedon? (I didn't know he directed it until I had finished watching it. And then like 35% of its awesomeness was subtracted, because it was him and it wasn't someone else being normal. But then 150% was added back on for being Joss Whedon.)

Gah. Beautiful movie. I saw it last Friday -- official opening day, I know, I'm just so cool -- and instantly (and I mean instantly, as soon as I saw their chemistry I was like THANK GOD NEW SHIP TO LOVE AND CHERISH FOREVER) fell absolutely head-over-heels in fangirl-squeeness for the perfection that is Hawkeye/Black Widow.

Only I keep wanting to call him Blackhawk, which is my unofficial official new title for the pairing because it's so good for them. And it is both of them. Like completely.

Anyway, I've spent literally the last six hours scouring the internet for fanfiction shipping these two. And because ff.net was quickly emptied of its offerings, I turned to lj and found all of the beautiful, dark fiction these two need.


And, funny thing, when I was taking an AP exam today, I was actually planning a Hawkeye-introspective that needs a lot of work now. And after reading a bunch of fiction, I came up with an... interesting, shall we say, fic. I will have fun writing it, because it will make me Hawkeye. Well, sort of. It'll link us. In a very interesting way.

Okay. Back to stuffing my brain with fanfiction instead of studying for my European History exam.

PS. Did anyone else think that Hawkeye and Black Widow should have been in Hunger Games instead?

Livejournal + fanfiction

http://thecolouryes.livejournal.com/

Go. Read shit. Enjoy yourself. I don't have anything new there really except one ramble of an intro post that might be amusing if anyone enjoys reading my rambles.

Also, I'll probably be scouring the lj depths for fanfiction since ff.net is sadly lacking in my new favourite ship.

Photoshop CS5

So after years of freeware and low-end graphics programs, I've finally started using Photoshop.

I think I may need to be resuscitated a few times. CS5 is amazing. I'm so upset I haven't had a computer strong enough to handle it for these last few years. Everything just reeks of ease of use for photo editors -- why haven't I seriously investigated this before?

Oh well. I have CS5 now, and through online tutorials I am teaching myself how to use it. And every tutorial I see, I am more and more amazed by the power of this program. I think, by far, my favourite feature is the magnetic lasso tool -- a blender's dream. Intelligent auto-selection, how easy you make my life. I haven't experimented much with the ability to handle 3D objects on 2D space, but I think has to be wonderful too. I quite enjoy the long history map that makes figuring out whether an edit was actually helpful very simple, and I'm teaching myself to use RAW images for my own stock because of how easily they are edited with Adobe software.

Dear Photoshop, I think you may change my life.

Those occasional nights when you just can't bring yourself to go to sleep

So, admittedly, I don't do this often. And I rarely pull proper all-nighters. Normally I have to sleep for a little bit, even just an hour or two, or I explode.

And I'm so frickin close to exploding right now! I mean ohmygodChimera. I mean, oh my god, Chimera was probably the best episode of Sanctuary I have ever seen.


I say "probably" because I'm holding out hope, especially with that last scene, for the two of them getting together in this season. I mean, what with whatever government agency it is with a stupid acronym messing up the relationship from Tesla's side, it's not like it'll be drama-free. I mean, it's Teslen, it's not like it would ever be drama-free.


I'm shaking right now from having watched that episode just now. And that was catching up on two really amazing episodes of Fringe. I was worried that Chimera wouldn't be able to compete with their messing with time and reality. So much for that!


Okay. Now, to channel this wonderful spastic energy into something productive. Or just reading Teslen fics. Which is productive..... in terms of my sanity!

Haha! Yay!

If you haven't figured it out by now, go watch Chimera this instant. And if you want to especially appreciate it, watch it in the middle of the night so you get extra jitters.

Sequels

Normally, I try to stay away from sequels. Mostly because real sequels are just cop-outs. They're generally just throwing new drama into a plot that's already been tied up with an elaborate bow. So the sequel becomes like confetti on top of the bow, which just makes it look excessive, or a second bow on top of the bow, which just makes the whole thing look stupid.

But if you're tired of metaphors, I'll stop talking about bows. The point I'm trying to make is that good sequels shouldn't really be called 'sequels' at all. They're the kind where the original story isn't entirely tied up, and you need more story to resolve the conflict. Those are the kinds of sequels I like, and there are often multiples of that kind of sequel. Those kinds of sequels make up trilogies and quartets.

Why am I talking about sequels all of a sudden? I'm working on a sequel to The End... as I use this to procrastinate from actually writing it. (Ironic, really. I started this blog to talk about writing, and it's ended up as somewhere I can procrastinate from writing by talking about it. I never think to post here when I'm not writing....) And some of the time, this sequel is being stupid and obnoxious. Actually, all of the time, so far, this sequel is being stupid and obnoxious. But if/when I finish it, it will resolve that ambiguous ending for you.

I mean, if you want the ending resolved for you at all. I wouldn't.

The wonders of 250 gigs...

That's how much memory I have on my hard drive. Since the most of what I do is word processing and internet browsing (not that this poorly tricked-out netbook can handle much more), I still have like 90 gigs of free space, even though I don't think I've deleted a single thing since I got this computer two years ago.


(Useless Update: I have 199 files in my recycle bin. I'm pretty sure 175 of them are music files which somehow imported into iTunes twice.)

Returning to the point, however, requires me to explain a few things. For the first four years of writing fanfiction, all my work lived on a 1 gig flash drive. This meant: 1) I actually took the time to properly back up my things 2) When I was done with a story, I would toss it away on the backup drive and promptly forget about it 3) I started freaking out whenever my flash drive got close to full, because that meant I would have to not carry around one of the stories that my life depended on, and 4) I thought 1 gig was a lot of memory. Granted, technology changes so quickly that this was back when external backup drives were 80 gigs and the size of a small novel.

However, my point here is that because of that kind of disturbing practice of getting rid of all my stories in some obscure place where it wasn't easy for me to find them again on a whim, I never really went back to old stories, at least not unless I was willing to devote a bunch of time into digging them out. Now, however, because I never delete anything, I spent a bunch of time re-reading my semi-recent stuff.


Another advantage -- almost entirely for you readers -- is that re-reading my semi-recent stuff inspires me to finish it, or to realise that I had a fanfic sitting on my computer finished but not entirely good enough for publishing, that on re-reading I decide, screw it, this is going on the internet. Because if I was brave enough to post the awfulness that was Letters to No-One back when I was twelve, I can bloody well publish some of my lesser works now.

In conclusion, I have posted a new fanfic. No, it's not my best. Yes, I am stupid for leaving it on my computer for so long without publishing it. I'm sorry. It's okay; I'll make it up to you by returning to fanfiction for a while. Fanfiction is far more comforting than original stuff, because at least fandoms come with pre-made characters.