fay_e: Text: though our instincts say that we should turn and run (instincts turn and run)
Tuesday, September 20th, 2016 08:28 pm
I think it's important to have days like this, away from the grind of the real world to fill one's head with other things.

Aka reader, I took leave again to watch a movie. I think it's pretty worth it. Despite rushing to the cinema from office, the contrast of the day is pretty important too. I went from a busy real world day to the no less quick but also important world of Kubo and the Two Strings.

I think an important part about animation is when you forget that you're watching an animation. Kubo goes into the realm of Nightmare Before Christmas - a world disjointed from the current one that we live in, but by the end you have bought into it.

Spoilery details on the movie )

I admit that I was initially iffy heading into the ending as I read spoilers that it did not do narrative justice to Kubo. Far from it. I think we are just so used to stories where the hero dons armour and gains a sword and fights that we feel not getting this sort of story is a cop out.

But Kubo has never been that sort of hero. All this while, we see his strengths has been his lute, his imagination and his capacity to love. That's why his weapon is not armour and sword.

More spoilers )

I also think the important moral to me is that I should not put on an armor and take up the sword because that is what other people expect. I think it is more important to string my lute and play on, as unconventional as it may be.

In conclusion: WATCH THE MOVIE. So worth it!
fay_e: Text: I'm dreaming away, wishing that heroes they truly exist (wishing heroes exist)
Sunday, October 4th, 2015 10:45 am
Everyone must watch the Martian immediately!!!

The Martian is for people who wonder at space and space travel and visiting other planets and sciencing your way through problems, especially the NASA type.

The Martian is for people who enjoy laughing at gallows humour and moments of "this is ridiculous why are we doing it" and then continuing to science in that manner anyway.

The Martian is for people who want to see men and women of all races and nationalities behaving competently, with their roots being acknowledged without the other extreme of highlighting it in neon.

The Martian is for people who cry at the isolation of astronauts and at rocket explosions and yet still fight for space travel because this is what the men and women who went into space would have wanted, because the hope is always greater than the risks.

Why are you still reading this? Go and watch the Martian immediately!

Oh you're waiting for spoilers )
fay_e: Text: if I told you a secret will you hold it and keep it alive (secret)
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2015 09:45 am
Sorry for people who saw the last post twice - I saw a typo and fixed it, not realizing that the "Use current time" option would use the time of editing. Alas.

So that this doesn't become just an apology, here's a meme about me


So what have you been up to? / Major life changes? Same old same old?

Same job, new team that has seen 3 changes in a single year for my direct bosses, so that's been annoying. I've also been experimenting with lifestyle changes such as clothes and dance classes, and since my self-esteem isn't the best it's come with some whiplash moments. But I think I am better overall.

What fandom are you in/do you spend most of your time in?

Not in any fandom at the moment, but judging from my tumblr surfing/reblogs I am technically in the MCU, Homestuck and Transformers fandoms. I'm just not writing fic at the moment for them, which is weird for me.

Where do you hang out online?

Here and tumblr, and that already takes up all my time.

What are you reading?

Guide books in preparation for my trip to Japan during the autumn leaves season. Sadly there isn't very much seasonal stuff.

What are you watching?

Media wise, nothing. I am keeping an eye on this pot of roses I bought in May because it likes to give me heart attacks like falling off the shelf or its blooms being so heavy it snaps the stem.

What are you making?

Currently rewriting the novel that I wrote for last year's NaNo. I'm 5 chapters in of 13, though I'm not sure if it will still be 13.

What are you squeeing about today?

Awesome music from 8tracks of the Kpop variety.

If you could rope old fandom friends into a new fandom, it would be.....

I don't have any new fandoms. I just wish my old fandom friends and I could find a new fandom to agree on. They'd probably ask me to watch Steven Universe, but while I enjoy seeing the posts on my dash I have no inclination to actually watch the series.

I should really watch/read/dive into _______ and then come talk to you about it!

Mad Max: Fury Road has been the movie of the year for me and I really wish I could talk to more people about it even though my urge to fic is not there. Also has anyone watched Hitman? I want to watch it for scenery pr0n.

What else is on your mind?

Another meme going around about what I would tell my 13 year old self - currently bouncing between "daring to be weird will actually make you a better person" and "the friends you make from now on, even the ones who were "forced" on you, will be your friends for life" - and of course spiraling into the nature of friendships and self-esteem from there.
fay_e: Text: silence falls between us, as the shadows steal the light (as the shadows steal the light)
Wednesday, August 26th, 2015 12:43 pm
In a new post, list ten fic that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard — they don’t have to be the “right” works, or even all the same pairing or fandom, just the fics that have touched you or that stuck with you somehow.

It's pretty interesting how the fics that have stayed with me are indicative of various times in my life. There's a fic from the time I used to read Harry Potter fics to get me through exams. There's fic from my Bleach writing days. And I've got things ranging from gen to straight up smut.

So here in no particular order are the fics that have stayed with me:

1) Who We Are by Persephone Kore
and other fics in the series
Once upon a time I used to intentionally type up all my class notes in my computer so come exam time, I could tell my parents that I needed to study on the computer because ALL MY STUFF IS THERE!!! and in between cramming I would read a LOT of Harry Potter fic, because people in that fandom were crazy enough to write novel length fics on FF.net which means I didn't have to open too many windows (yes tabs didn't exist then).

Who We are, though not quite being a novel, was one of the Harry Potter fics read in those days. It stuck with me because it has my favourite stuff: good Slytherins, better interhouse cooperation and people struggling to do good, even the good guys. The idea of a younger Tom Riddle getting a second chance and Ginny trying to figure out if he deserves it is catnip to me.

2) Means of Persuasion
But taking about novel length stories, I cannot NOT mention this fic from the Transformers fandom. I honestly don't remember which verse it came from (darn comics) but it contains my personal fanon for my favourite characters in the general Transformers universe to me. Yeah, there's a few glaring differences - I actually ship Prowl/Jazz and I'm EXTREMELY fond of all the fanon on Twin bonds, but the rest of it hits the spot. I love that Prowl struggles with the right decisions, and Bluestreak bounces back from everything, even his nearest and dearest reading him wrong. The action is pretty good too.

3) Rain Over Blue Water by The_Starhorse
For twin fic from the Transformers fandom though, I have to go with this fic even though it's just Sideswipe. His view of his identity just resonates throughout the fic.

4) Conflicts of Interest by rageprufrock
I like this story because I love the voice of Connor, which is young and self-absorbed without being annoying. But then again he's Lex Luthor's kid so what do you expect. The Clark Kent bits are bonus.

5) Cities in Dust (shit let's be hardboiled)
If there's a fic that fully captures the spirit of the canon that inspired it, this fic has my vote 200% of the time. It's a Homestuck fic that has colourful chat logs (both content and actual visual colours), great drawings, associated soundtrack and trolls actually being aliens. Also it features my boy Dave Strider and the too awesome to belong to anyone Terezi Pyrope.

6) New Orleans series by silverlining99
I would particularly recommend the first fic because it is HOT LIKE BLAZES (especially when you imagine it all with Karl Urban's Bones) and sometimes I fantasise about having a New Year's kiss that's half as hot. *fans self* Though the second fic has a great Kirk-Bones friendship.

7) Covert fic(s) by Ten
I cannot describe this fic due to it being under f-lock and never been published publicly. But elements of it keep popping up in my own fics and I only wish it was already a trope like the less deserving soulmates' name on your arm thing.

8) Icebreakers by Suppi-chan
Back when I was a wee little fanthing, I saved this fic to a NOTEPAD document and read the heck out of it. Up until now "Kinomoto Sakura was having a tantrum. it was a very small tantrum, and it was being conducted in the privacy of her best friend's room, but still, Kinomoto Sakura was having a screaming, kicking tantrum" is the best way to open a CCS fic ever. I'll fight you on this.

I have pretty much reached the end of fic that I've read YEARS after the fact, but I will link you to two more fics that I pretty much roll around in glee and squee when I see they update:

9) Battlefield Terra
A Homestuck fic where on top of aliens being aliens, there are hot robots and mindreading and cultural misunderstandings and moments of BLAZING HAWT.

10) Life in Reverse
I'm particularly tickled by the bookends of my post, but I had to put this here because the more things change the more they stay the same. I like "bad" guys who make the choice NOT to do bad, and have to struggle with it, and it's also a nod to my current fandom, as it were, of MCU.
fay_e: Text: It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart (speak right to my heart)
Wednesday, May 6th, 2015 09:23 pm
This trailer for The Little Prince movie made me cry, because The Little Prince was just so important to my life, and the trailer made me remember the sentiment of reading the bits of the story that were quoted in the trailer.
fay_e: Text: If what they say is nothing last forever, what makes love the exception (what makes love the exception)
Friday, March 13th, 2015 11:30 pm
I have a very curious habit when it comes to books, because I almost only ever borrow them from libraries. I guess I developed that habit because I had the fortune of having access to many good libraries1 in my time2, and my reading habits outstripped my spending ability3

When I turned 16 I was in a good library located near the lecture theatre my lessons were held at. The gravitational eddies of the fiction section had tugged me somewhere in the P section, and I found myself staring at a collection of books with garishly coloured covers. One of these had witches and wizards facing each other underneath a title that screamed "Equal Rites", and just so happened to be written by a person called Terry Pratchett.

Why not? I figured, and borrowed the book.

Cut for reminiscing )

So this is an tribute to Pterry for being a part of my life, no matter how late he entered it or how early he left. He'll be missed, even as the friends he brought are just a book away, waiting to be opened so that his voice can reach out to me from Discworld all over again. And while the cynical side of says yeah yeah he had to go sometime, like his characters and stories there's the hope that Death, perhaps, could be just as he had imagined.

Foonotes )
fay_e: Text: If what they say is nothing last forever, what makes love the exception (what makes love the exception)
Thursday, April 10th, 2014 01:44 pm
Another thing I need to keep in mind: actions speak louder than words.

I think I do a pretty good job writing conversation, including situations where characters say one thing but mean the other. The trouble is that I tend to pad out the bits between conversations with thoughts, rather than actions. Even in the instances where I use actions, I like to write out the emotion behind them, as if that would somehow make them clearer.

Obviously I need to let the reader do a little of the work themselves, and just stop there.
fay_e: Text: and I'll be your downfall (be your downfall)
Monday, February 3rd, 2014 08:32 am
For once, an article on the personality of creative people makes me understand myself a bit better, and also allays some concerns that I had.
Tags:
fay_e: Text: if I told you a secret will you hold it and keep it alive (secret)
Monday, December 23rd, 2013 03:00 pm
Again stealing things from other people's memes, I found a topic from this post about fannish growing up where the poster is asked to write about how life and age and experiences has changed his/her taste in fannish stuff.

It fascinated me enough that I have to write about it myself.

I probably have been fannish my whole life, because I remember obsessing about books and Chinese drama like Justice Bao, but the age in which I remember being fannish in a significant life-style changing way was when I was 12. That was when the wave of Japanese manga/anime started becoming prevalent in my country, probably starting with Sailor Moon. They were all pre-dubbed/translated into Chinese.

The interesting thing about being where I live is that the Taiwanese version of translations came out the fastest. That meant that I got translations in a) my mother tongue, b) with the traditional script that I wasn't as familiar with, because I grew up with the simplified form of Chinese.

That was why when I first became "fannish", I was predominantly reading and writing (!!!) in Chinese. I wrote my first fic in Chinese. I also somehow managed to overcome the barrier and actually read traditional script (when I learned simplified), which is still pretty useful now. (I don't know why I didn't extend that power to Japanese boo hoo).

Watch me morph over the years! )
fay_e: Text: If what they say is nothing last forever, what makes love the exception (what makes love the exception)
Friday, November 8th, 2013 04:21 pm
Someday I want to write a story that includes thunder that rattles glass in its panes. I'm listening to thunder rattle the glass in my bookshelves right now and it is a glorious sound.
Tags:
fay_e: Text: how she rocks in keds and tube socks (rocks keds and tube socks)
Friday, October 11th, 2013 04:25 pm
[livejournal.com profile] tenebris and I got to talking about what we considered "wardrobe essentials". I thought it was a pretty misleading term, because what I absolutely had to have in my wardrobe is as follows:

Clothes - A little black dress. A fancy top and good pants. A brighter dress for outings/parties. One pair of jeans and 1 nice T-shirt. Collared blouse. Knee length coat. Formal coat. Button up sweater. Socks are optional.

Shoes - One pair each of flats, sneakers, low heels in black, higher heels in another colour, boots (any length)

Which I think is quite different from the ladies.

So I thought it would be fun to do it for the other characters too!

Take a peep into the wardrobe )

I might do Homestuck next, this is fun!
fay_e: Text: If what they say is nothing last forever, what makes love the exception (what makes love the exception)
Saturday, October 5th, 2013 09:06 am
I made the mistake of watching Bleach episode 342, after a really long time of looking at other things. I'd saved the ep on my phone, and was checking what was on it on a rainy morning.

This time round, I picked up on different things. I noticed that Ichigo complained that Rukia wasn't looking at him, but after she did he knew what she wanted to say. Which was why when Rukia was saying her farewell, she was looking away before looking at him in that last moment. Can I just say this is one of my kinks? Where speaking is not communication, because there are so many other ways to communicate too.

I also noticed that Ichigo went down fighting to the last, and Rukia let him. It's the partner kink that I've been nattering about all this while.

And just like that, I'm back in love with IchiRuki all over again. It's my forever OTP, because it encapsulates all the things that I like and look for in a pairing. Canon hasn't been very kind to them (both as characters and as a pairing), but I'll always hold IchiRuki near and dear to my heart.
fay_e: Text: if I told you a secret will you hold it and keep it alive (secret)
Sunday, August 26th, 2012 12:32 pm
It occured to me that I haven't had a proper fandom in a long time - not one that I got as immersed in as Bleach. In between fluttering around my various fandoms (and writing crossovers!), it started to be harder and harder to match icons to what I was writing.

I made a bunch of text icons a while back and really wanted to use them too. Somehow, these two things came together perfectly, and I decided that I ought to put all the text icons up.

It's harder than I expected! Though I hadn't used some of my fannish icons in a long while, they're associated with things that I did in the past. Sometimes just looking at them makes me remember what kind of moods I had when I used certain icons. It's nostalgic.

However, since this week seems to be the season for change, what with me flying off and everything, I thought I ought to just knuckle down and change my icons.

I hope you like my icons. I find them pretty.
fay_e: Text: I'm the morning rain (morning rain)
Thursday, June 14th, 2012 10:40 pm
Song
Adrienne Rich

You're wondering if I'm lonely:
OK then, yes, I'm lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I'm lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawn's first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I'm lonely
it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it's neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning
fay_e: Text: I'm the morning rain (morning rain)
Saturday, August 13th, 2011 09:05 am
For Reasons that I Shall Not Go Into, here is a definitive list of things that I would write for, if I had the time/energy, as of this date. Items in bold are things that I have written for.

Updated 2016

EXPERT )

INTERMEDIATE )

BASIC )
fay_e: Text: I'm the morning rain (morning rain)
Wednesday, December 15th, 2010 07:33 am
I AM

- Brainstormer of universes
- A language person who deals with numbers
- Woman of few words, lover of them all
- Quick with a pen - whether writing or editing
- Spoiler Queen
- Admirer of beautiful things and cutesy things
- Living my life through music
- Occasionally a Hollow

I LIKE

- Travelling
- Languages and culture
- Getting to the heart of the matter
- Freedom
- The meaning of things
- Both logic and chaos

I DISLIKE

- Being constrained
- Cooling my heels
- Dealing with small parts all the time
Tags:
fay_e: Text: I'm the morning rain (rukia blue skies)
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 10:39 pm
Ganked this from [personal profile] tenebris

Meme Rules:
*Leave a comment asking "Me me me!"
*I'll respond with five questions, quality may vary
*Update your journal with your answers
*Offer said conditions, so that the meme propagates

Ten's qns, as a sample )