How to waste an hour…

I have an hour from now until it’s time for me to prepare for my next and last class of the week. It’s sort of boring, because the forums have all  been more than quiet, there are no interesting books in the university library, and I don’t feel like continuing with my short story just yet. True enough, I have an essay due in two weeks, but I’m not in the mood for research, mainly because I did a very similar essay last semester and if I reword it and add to it, it might just work. However, to do that, I’ll actually have to go back and look at my essay first.

I am actually bored out of my mind. My fanfiction drafts are at home so I can’t start typing up anything. I have my mp3 player with me, but I can’t here, so there is hardly any point. I can’t wait till I get home and can start typing up my update so that I might finish early and watch a movie. I bought three of them on Wednesday, and I haven’t watched a a single one.

Might actually go and make myself work on my oneshot, or just another scene for Chance Encounter.

Christian Bale and World Events

Thursday 24 July 2008, The Press, CHCH.

No, I’m not going to blog about Christian Bale and his life; that’s his business. Truth be told, I’m more interested in the newspaper itself. It’s very interesting actually. Notice how the headline about Mr. Bale has a bigger font than the one about the man who did something nasty with a bulldozer? Moreover, the former is higher than the latter, and the fact that they’re on the same page in the world news section really does say a lot.

The newspaper tells us that as a society or a species, we are very nosy. We want to know other people’s deepest darkest secrets. That’s why the headline about Mr. Bale is very big. The editors of the newspaper probably want people to see it, get interested, and buy the paper. And if they didn’t know that we would be more interested in Christian Bale than, say, the plight of the Palestinian people, why would they give him a bigger headline?

It also shows us how trivial we have become. Since when did gossip about famous actors become worthy headlines in world news? Not that I don’t read gossip, but the world news section is presumably for news which has some sort of world impact. As good an actor as Christian Bale is, I highly doubt he has any effect on world events which can influence the fate of the human species. Lots of people assault others, and if every person who was accused of assaulting someone was mentioned in the news, we’d have newspapers as thick as the Oxford Dictionary. So really, world news should be saved for those really important things, such as the rebirth of the Taliban in Afghanistan, or the state of affairs in Iraq, or Israel and Iran’s latest confrontation and another rise in oil prices…you get my idea.

It’s a sad world, isn’t it, when people are more interested in the private business of actors than things which could actually affect their lives. ‘How?’ you say. ‘Iran and Israel are really far away. I live all the way in Australia/Brazil/the United States/Japan/New Caledonia/England. It’s not going to affect me.’ The fact is, the world is like a row of dominoes. One domino toppling over will hit another domino, causing it to fall, and so on and so on…you know, the Domino Effect. Israel and Iran going to war would cause oil prices to soar, and since most things in this world need oil, your wallet is going to be a lot lighter. Now, perhaps obesity is a bad thing, but I’ve never heard of anyone complaining that their wallet is too heavy.

As for Christian Bale’s business? Well, it’s his business. Let’s leave it at that.

Banning Junk Food — The Embodiment of Futility.

The other day, my brother told me about how in his high school (which was my high school) has banned the sale of junk food in the school canteen. The canteen has a monopoly on the student’s food expenditure as students are not permitted out of school grounds during school hours, and that includes lunchtime. This is a rather autocratic move on the school’s part (school has never been much of a democracy, but this is one of the worst moves yet) because I can be certain that most students don’t want to be sold sugar-free sweets which taste bad, vegetarian sandwiches and juice mixed with spring-water. They want their sausage rolls, their mince pies and their french fries.

They’ve been talking about banning unhealthy food for a while now; it’s part of the Ministry of Education’s strategy to decrease obesity in young New Zealanders. However, such a move is futile, by my reckoning. Teenagers are determined when it comes to eating, and if they can’t get what they want the conventional way, they’ll start looking for unconventional ways.

Last year was the year I graduated, and already, I knew there were the beginnings of a blackmarket instant-noodle trade being conducted by some of the senior students. They would buy boxes upon boxes of instant-noodles from the shops, commandeer a few lockers and use them for storage. If younger students wanted noodles, they would search out the senior students and carry out the transaction. Not bad for teenagers, you know. I was quite impressed. It was tremendously systematic. It occurred not because there weren’t instant noodles for sale at the canteen, but simply because the senior students provided more flavours of instant noodles.

My brother tells me that the underground noodle trade has experienced an upsurge ever since the junk food ban, which included the noodles which the canteen used to sell. At this rate, the canteen will probably run out of business pretty soon because, unlike the other students, senior students were allowed to go out during school hours. I’m pretty sure some of the younger students will soon begin to pay the older students who have cars to go out to the local take-out shops to buy them pizzas or fish and chips. It’s already happening, only it’s on a very small scale. Don’t think it will stay that way for long.

So really, ordering people to stop eating junk food is futile. What you have to do is convince them to eat healthy food, and really, it’s up to families to instill a habit of healthy eating into the children. Force is pretty much useless when the majority is against a certain idea. After all, we’re a world which promotes democracy.

The Complicated World of Fanfiction

I realize I haven’t written much about my writing and creative life in this blog, and it’s supposed to be a writer’s blog. What can I say? I’m just a bit ditzy like that, and I am a professional when it comes to going off topic. Just because I haven’t been writing about being creative doesn’t mean I haven’t been creative though. I’ve spent the most of the past three weeks trying to think of how to go about writing my latest fanfiction creation, Chance Encounter: Legacy of the Third Age. I’d been consulting all sorts of Tolkien experts and discussing options with them; I’d even read bits of the Silmarillion. While it has been hailed as one of Tolkien’s greatest works, and I loved his other great work, The Lord of the Rings, the Silmarillion was a really dry read, at least for me. I’m the type of person who latches onto a character and then attempts to put myself in the character’s shoes. The Silmarillion is more like a history text.

Anyway, I read the relevant bits, did a lot of discussion, and that was just for the back story. It really goes to show how hard writing is when you want to do it well, and fanfiction, just because it can’t be published, isn’t what douchebags write. You need to do a lot of research or else they’ll flame you to kingdom come.

Speaking of flames, many people can’t tell constructive criticism from a flame, which is sad, because while flames are sometimes just copy-and-pasted messages, constructive criticism is designed to help the writer. Sure, it doesn’t feel great when you first read it, but after you’ve absorbed it, you realize that you were doing something wrong, and you learn from that other person’s experience.

So, if you ever get a flame (generally goes along the line of ‘your writing sucks big time, and you’re so bad that you should jump off a cliff’, or something like that), you should just reflect a bit before replying. Is your writing really bad? Have you checked your spelling and grammar? Have you totally warped the fandom you’re writing in? If you answered yes to the first, no to the second, and yes to the third, then maybe you should change the story, or go to someone else for advice. If you get a flame, you’re probably going to get concrit as well, if your story needs changing. If you only get that one flame, you might also have to check whether the flamer hates you. There is a lot of faction struggle going on in the fanfiction world, and some people flame each other because they hate each other. You might be the friend of someone who has an enemy, and the enemy will see fit to flame you because you are their enemy by association. Also, don’t reply to the flamer. It just makes them happy.

So, yeah. That’s my advice for the day.

And now, I should be writing some concrit for someone, and then go off to eat breakfast/brunch, and write in my journal. I finished my first Moleskine notebook yesterday, and now I’m going back to the cheap stuff for a while before I continue with the rest of my Moleskines.

Good intentions amount to nothing.

You know, I had every intention of reading my history textbooks and going over my notes today. Knowing me, it didn’t happen. I was too busy reading and replying to my reviews (that was during late morning and early afternoon), and then once again, I’m stuck to the computer screen. It’s just that the internet is so interesting, and I have so many things I can do online, compared with the fairly limited amount of activities I can do offline. But I will do what I’m meant to do tomorrow (who are you kidding, Tel?).

I launched my new story yesterday. These days, my life seems to revolve around my fanfiction and my online social life. My parents keep on telling me that I need to go out more, but real people seem so mundane. I hardly ever find anyone who can talk about the weird things which I’m interested in. My best friend is all the way over in the North Island, so I can’t really talk to her, except through instant messaging. Honestly, the phone bills cost more than if I want to call somewhere far away like Alaska.

There’s this nagging feeling at the back of my mind that I should concentrate on my studies, but where is the fun in that? All right, studying gets you money –my scholarships tell me that much– but it’s so boring. All you do is sit there and stare at the page and hope that your sponge-like brain can absorb something and retain it. Let’s face it, most water goes out of the sponge after you take it out of the water. At least my exam marks from last semester weren’t too bad. I didn’t fail anything, so I’m slightly relieved.

All right, I’m just rambling and being boring here, and I haven’t even written in my journal. I’ll go off and do that now. Oh, and I’m feeling a bit hungry. Maybe it’s time to rob the pantry.

With You, I’ll Be Only Sibylla (Part 10)

Disclaimer: Kingdom of Heaven is directed by Sir Ridley Scott and written by William Monahan. I don’t own any of it, and I’m not making any profit. I’m just borrowing the story and the characters and making my own interpretation.

 

Chapter 10: The Pain of Love

 

To be confused was one of the most tormenting feelings that a man could have. The horse moved of its own accord underneath him. It knew its way home, but Balian, unlike his horse, did not know exactly where he would go next, or where he actually wanted to go. He held the reins loosely, all the while battling the urge to go back and beg Sibylla for forgiveness, even though he had done nothing wrong. His heart ached. He longed for her, loved her, and he would gladly die for her, but he could not sell his soul, not even for his Sibylla.

 

‘Did you know?’ he asked Godfrey inside his head. ‘Did you know that to be a knight meant that I would have to suffer?’ He felt the phantom sting as he remembered the slap that the old knight had given him at his knighting ceremony. Yes, of course Godfrey had known. He himself had been a knight, and he had told Balian through that slap that he would suffer. The man closed his eyes. He should be accepting this all with good grace; he had come to Jerusalem for forgiveness, after all, and this was his penance. However, his heart would not accept it quietly. He was torn.

 

“I do love you,” he whispered into the cool night breeze, half hoping that it would carry his words to his princess.

Idiots and…wise people?

The other day, I was making up a statement concerning freedom and wisdom and I needed a group noun for wise and smart people. Being the relatively studious sort of person, I went and got my Oxford Thesaurus off my bookshelf and tried to look for something which would suit. One of the few words I knew which meant someone smart was ‘genius’, but as there was such a fine and fuzzy line between genius and madness, I couldn’t use that for my saying. I looked up ‘genius’ in the Thesaurus. That didn’t yield any good results (‘Einstein’ wasn’t exactly what I was looking for) so I went and looked up ‘intellectual’ instead. There were very few synonyms, but after a while, I chose ’sage’. The word ‘intellectual’, while appropriate, didn’t have the right rhythm. The thing is, I didn’t find many nouns which meant ’smart people’.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the word ‘fool’. That was the other word I was using in my statement. There were so many synonyms listed there that it would take a while for me to type them all out. I found ‘idiot’, ‘ass’ (very insulting to donkeys, in my opinion), ‘halfwit’, ‘blockhead’, ‘dunce’, ‘dolt’, ‘dullard’, ’simpleton’, ‘clod’, ‘dope’ etc. just to name a few. The most important observation was that there were a lot more synonyms for ‘fool’ than there were for ‘intellectual’.

So what does that tell us about society? It was just a curious thought. Why are there so many words for a stupid person? Do we live in a society of idiots, or are we just a defamatory society which delights in putting people down? Either way, it doesn’t look great.

Democracy doesn’t always work.

No, I’m not going to go off on another political rant. This is actually about fanfiction. (surprise, surprise) I put up a poll asking which crossover I should write after I finish Chance Encounter and, to my surprise (and a bit of dismay), my least favourite option got the most votes. Of course, I do like all of the choices, but the one I actually prepared for didn’t really get very many votes. It’s a matter of which one I should write first, but still. The most popular choice was a Lord of the Rings/Star Wars crossover. Just as well I have decided that the super technology of George Lucas’ creation does not work in Middle Earth, or else I would be so lost. I’m a technophobe, despite everything.

I still have to finish the latest chapter of With You, I’ll Be Only Sibylla. There are seven hundred words to go, and I intend to post it tomorrow, preferably in the morning. It’s been over a week since I’ve updated the story, and I’m feeling guilty about neglecting it. For me, after an author has started a story, he or she has a responsibility to finish it and not leave readers hanging. I’ve been annoyed more than once at authors who start brilliant stories and then abandon them. An update once every three months is also not good enough for me. Imagine watching your favourite TV show. How can you wait three months for the next episode? A weekly basis suits me well enough. My readers know exactly when I’ll have a new chapter for them, and it keeps the story in their heads so they’re actually interested enough to read it.

I have also decided that getting up late is BAD. Sleeping in is comfortable, but I miss the tranquility of the hours just before dawn. I am going to try my very best to get myself tired tonight so that I will go to bed early and get up at the right time tomorrow.

Thursday is my busiest day this semester. I have class from nine until four in the afternoon, with one two hour break in between. Still, I’m much freer this semester, so I should be able to give each subject a bit more time. History sounds hard (I’m doing second year History and I’m still in my first year), but fun. Well, History is always fun. I love the passion of the lecturers. They make even medieval economics sound interesting.

And the fanfiction feud continues.

I admit, I lurk a bit in other people’s forums, if only to better my understanding of the so-called ‘enemy’. Mind you, while I respect a lot of them as wordsmiths, I have no respect for them as people. They tend to like to stick their noses in other people’s business. One of them, I’ll call her N for the sake of her right to anonymity, attacked my friend for writing a parody of a really bad story. Now, I only write parodies of other people’s stuff if I have reached the end of my patience with them (that occurs when the author has refused to accept any helpful advice which people have given them and has rudely said so), and to my knowledge, that bad story was the only story which my friend has ever mocked, and the author doesn’t care. 

As a result, the parodies and MST’s of other people’s stories have now been banned on the site, where N is a moderator. To add insult to injury, N has been gloating, yes, gloating about her victory. Not that it’s much of a victory to speak of. I was actually thinking of giving up my MST because frankly, I don’t have the time to MST twenty-one or more chapters of a bad story. However, after this little episode, I’m determined to finish the MST no matter what, if only just to spite those who think they have won. We’ll not stop just because the site has banned us. That’s why my friend made a site, and I’m advertising it. If you’re interested, you’ll find the site here. I’ve also made my own MST blog, called Mockfiction. That’s just my nature. I’m not doing this because of the story. I’m doing this because I refuse to admit defeat to those women who are acting like children. Yes, I know I’m being immature, but hey, I’m a teenager; I’m allowed to be immature. Those women are mothers or are over thirty. They shouldn’t be having bitch-fights with teenagers.

It is an author’s right to write bad fiction. It’s called ‘Freedom of Speech’. It is also someone’s right to mock bad fiction; that is also called ‘Freedom of Speech’. No one complains about parodies of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, simply because they’re published works. When someone puts his or her work on the internet, it is open to scrutiny, and readers have just as much right to write parodies of those as they do to write parodies of actual published works.

Our parodies might not be well-written, but some of them are very well written, and it’s a way to relax, to let off steam after having read bad fiction, or just to try and convince the author that they have made some stupid mistakes if they won’t listen to nice suggestions.

Just life, really.

Well, I actually managed to get up in the morning today, and then wasted all the time online. Honestly, I feel as if I am addicted to the internet. The first thing I do when I get up is go on the computer and see who’s online. It’s sad, actually. A lot of time should actually be spent writing. However, I have just finished a story, and I expect to feel melancholic for a while yet. It just feels like that another stage of my life is over, and I’ll never experience the joy of writing that particular story again.

I did read a book, and it was a really funny one too; a chick-lit novel. I’ve become quite fond of those at the moment. Maybe it’s the need to read something silly and lighthearted after reading all those serious history books. My friend’s got his forum up and running, and people are posting things there. It’s quite exciting, and I’ve stolen some ideas from the other forum .

Anyway, I did a paper dump again (to those of you who don’t know, a paper dump is when I dump all my drafts because I’ve finished typing them up. It amounts to quite a lot of paper per week). My desk now looks slightly tidier, but I’ve yet to prepare for the return to my studies. Exam grades come out on Tuesday, and I hate waiting for results. It’s almost worse than doing the exam itself.

This week, I should actually be working on the beginning of the next instalment of my fanfiction series. I’ve got the minor details sorted out, finally. What amazed me was how long it took to find a proper name for a very minor character, and the right Roman emperor. Since it’s only the first week of semester, I don’t expect too much work, so it’ll be quite good for launching the sequel (and even if it was a busy week, I would launch the sequel anyway. I made a promise).

Nothing exciting has happened in my life lately. I’ve even neglected journal writing *gasp*. Once the semester starts, there will be more things to talk about.

Fanfiction Feud

I’m not sure how I got involved in this in the first place, since I wasn’t there for the beginning of it. What I do know is that the ‘enemy’ is condemning people by association, and even though I have not been involved, they’ve been targetting me anyway, although recently, they have not said anything about me.

Basically, they’re trying to get my friend B and they’ve been trying to get us framed or banned or make us all look like idiots. So far, they haven’t succeeded. It all stems down to an inability to live and let live. Sure, we have different opinions about what people should do if they encounter bad writers. I’m all for giving criticism and, if they fail to listen to any criticism, making parodies.

I’ve seen them criticize others before, but they’re against parodies, saying it’s unhelpful and immature. I just think it’s a difference of opinion. People have different ways of dealing with frustration. I haven’t done much of what is called ‘flaming’. In fact, I’ve written about four flames so far, and I have not used any expletives.

My friend’s parody did get reported for being offensive though, and as a result, parodies of other people’s work are now banned from that site. That’s why we’ve been in a flurry of activity as of last night, making new websites where people can post these parodies.

End of holidays…and I haven’t done anything.

It’s the end of the mid-year break, and I have to say, I haven’t done anything except sleep, and feud with people on the internet (but that’s counted as doing nothing, because we’re all bark and no bite). I just found that MST’s and parodies of other people’s bad writing have been banned on the fanfiction sites which I frequent. It’s a shame, because it’s a way to let off steam after reading such bad fiction.

 

I’m also starting on my new crossover. It’s the last in the series (so far anyway) and I’ve done so much research for the back-story. It’s odd, actually because although it’s important, it’s only a minor detail in the plot.

 

Anyway, I promise myself that I will clean up my room tomorrow. It’s an absolute mess; clothes are everywhere, my desk is buried under paper and I hardly have the room to move about. Better have that all done before I go to archery with my friend on Sunday, or else I’ll be starting this new semester with a pig-sty for a workstation.

With You, I’ll Be Only Sibylla (Part 9)

Disclaimer: I don’t own anything. Kingdom of Heaven belongs to Sir Ridley Scott and William Monahan, and History.

 

Chapter 9: A Kingdom of Conscience

 

Doors were meant for protection; those leading to Sibylla’s quarters were made to keep out any unwelcome presence. Inside was her refuge; a place of peace and safety in the middle of Jerusalem’s dark undercurrents and courtly intrigues. The colours and hangings had all been chosen for the tranquillity they represented. The inner chambers were sheltered from the heat, but with the coming of evening, they would be graced for a short while, with the dying golden light of the sun as it set over the heart of Christendom.

 

The princess loved the security she felt when she was in her sanctuary; it was like being in the warm loving embrace of her old nurse, who had long since passed away. When she returned this afternoon, she expected to find her son there, playing or completing the tasks set by his tutor. What she saw gave her a most unpleasant shock. Guy had gone too far; he had invaded her haven and worse yet, he was with her son, telling her boy how he ought to arrange his pewter figures. The man had his back to her, but she could hear him quite clearly. “Always surround your knights with foot-soldiers,” he told the boy.