◇ Done with 3 out of 4 finals! Which you would think means I'm MOSTLY DONE.

Unfortunately, I also have a group research project proposal due Monday for an honours course for summer. And my portfolio is due on June 6th and I need to write... 6k more words and do about 20 more drawings. My wrist is in agony just thinking about it. But I will do my best! Half-way there!

But this is why I've been totally gone, haha. The last month or so has been solid projects and presentations and studying for finals. I feel exhausted but I cannot fall before the finish line.

◇ My laptop's been crashing lately and I've been too busy to really investigate as to why. It might just be mad because the thousand or so firefox tabs I've got open, which. I guess is really the start of my summer to-do list, start going through and sorting through stuff. Most of it is stuff like fic to read, fashion collections I wanted to look at, videos to watch for later, etc but I've not had time to that so as a result: this!

◇ Two letters arrived this week! I sent some postcards out to friends in America, and got one back with a really nice tarot card (The Strength) sticker enclosed, a note on cute stationary, and and a little patch to sew to one of my coats. I have a bunch of post-cards because I like visiting museums, so I'm going to send one back, but I'm wondering if I should scout about the city's second-hand stores for something of similar cool-factor and care to send back.

The other is because I've been playing thin black gulf via post with another friend. It's nice to have a reason to use my dip pen and it's really fun to construct the letters. ivoryandhorn mentioned she typed up her letter first before committing it to pen and paper, so we'd have a record to look back upon uncensored at the end of our game and that's a good idea. I think because the difference in the size of handwriting vs text, I'm going to handwrite out my part and then type it up, but I think having a record of what I've previously written is a good idea.

That said, I haven't read the letter yet because I'm trying not to be distracted from school stuff. I'm saving it for when I'm done with my work as a treat.

◇ Though of course it's when I can't do fun stuff that I have ideas for things to write. I won't say they're good ideas, but they're ideas!

◇This first one... well, maybe it doesn't require context, but it's easier to explain the idea properly by contextualising it with its inspiration. So! Oulipo was a french collective of writers/mathematicians who decided to try and see what happened when you constrained creativity by working within very specific forms. Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities is a work that comes out of this movement, and it's very cool.

Another famous Oulipian work is Raymond Queneau's Exercices de style which is the same short story written 99 times, but each time though the events are the same it's reframed through a different lens-- genre lens, tone, only through visual description, script format, etc. And while I have no desire to write the same thing 99 times...

I think it'd be fun to have a list of different "lenses" and then enstars stories and try and rewrite the stories through different lenses! You can't change events, but other than that anything else is fair game. I think it'd maybe be fun to do with other people, but tbh I don't know who else would be interested. I just think the changes made in adaption and how things are adapted is inherently interesting, and I want to see how much you can make a different thing from the same script. I'm one of those people who really likes weird staging of Shakespeare plays, so this is just how I am.

◇ In... an unexpected rarity, I got a comment over on ao3 saying they wanted to see more of a one-shot fic. A fic I did actually have an idea for follow-up. The problem is, I don't think the "sequel" is necessarily much like the original? But my taste in classic shoujo manga is like, you know. Kaze to Ki no Uta. A Cruel God Reigns. Of course I'd be happy to write more if there's an audience for it.

I just also think my work isn't really written for an audience and being aware of like, oh!! Maybe someone likes my work!! Paradoxically makes me like hm well that can't be right, if I write more they will simply come to realise that it is not their thing at all.

C'mon my guy, don't be like that. Kind comments should be motivators, not demotivators. So maybe I will try and push back against that feeling and write the sequel. And if it turns out to not be the commenter's thing, that's still fine bc it's an idea I wanted to write anyway!

◇ Enstars/minecraft death game mash-up. this one is haunting me. I have no excuse it just is.

◇ Katabasis, or A Smile as Wide as the Road to Hell. I don't think I've talked about this one here before, but it's an old project. tl;dr: In a world where the entertainment industry is run by the literal underworld, Mashiro Tomoya goes to seek his fortune.

To expand slightly more about the setting: Japan's film capital is in the underworld. Old stars and starlets live forever on film because they're already dead. There's a mystique about dying young and living forever but also an obvious taboo against the living going there, living people who go there need their food brought in by train from the overworld bc if you eat of the land of the dead you are trapped there as one of the dead, etc.

Cast:

◇ Mashiro Tomoya: a young aspiring actor. Cast as the heroine against his will, he gets everything he ever wanted. He protests he regrets it, but not enough to leave.
◇ Shino Hajime: a childhood friend and roommate. Pay is decent for people in the underworld willing to do work, as the dead don't need money to eat or live, and Hajime needs decent pay more than he needs anything else from living.
◇ Tenma Mitsuru: a childhood friend. Seen in flashbacks, but not present tense.
◇ Nito Nazuna: got Tomoya the audition. Was supposed to be the heroine, but declined. Formerly a close collaborator with Itsuki Shu. He is relieved, guilty, and annoyed by the recent turn of events.
◇ Itsuki Shu: An auteur and dead man. After being killed by Tenshouin Eichi, he has sealed himself up in a cave and screams that he's dead, go away at anyone who attempts to make him make movies again.
◇ Kagehira Mika: A former protege of Itsuki Shu. Determined to finish Shu's last film, his magnum opus, for him in hopes it will draw him out of his cave and make him live again. A wreck of a human being.
◇ Tenshouin Eichi: Owns this town, and the Yumenosaki Studio. A devil. Possibly in more than one sense. Producer on many a Hibiki picture.
◇ Hibiki Wataru: A black and white starlet, way back when. Been in this business ages. On Kagehira's current picture as a favour to the deceased. Currently in love with Tenshouin Eichi, and with harrassing Mashiro Tomoya.