i tried to be like grace kelly

DEAR CANDY HEARTS WRITER:

Hi! This is the first time I'm doing this particular style of challenge, and the first time I've done a non-Yuletide fic challenge in a really long time. So I feel that weird, first day of school energy, a mix of excited and also nervous.

Anyway. On AO3 I'm brandnewsoul. This is to kind of give you an idea of what I like, both by bookmarks and by my own writing. For more ideas of the kind of vibes I'm going for, a few of my favorite movies are 10 Things I Hate About You, Roman Holiday, Hustlers, Out of Sight, Casanova (the one with Heath Ledger), and Moulin Rouge. So, romcoms with rivals/enemies to lovers, witty banter, some crime, and (mostly) happy endings.

And more specifically, here's a breakdown of what I'm wishing for with every request I have: ( Lupin III, Knives Out, MCU, Original Work, and 20th Century CE RPF. )

Sometimes I feel like I forget how to write.

I spent two years writing in a journal every day. I used to update LJ at least five times a week. I used to be able to crank out a 2000 word one shot fan fic in an evening, giving myself a full twenty-four hours to proof it and second-guess myself before posting it.

And now, sometimes, words fail me. I don't know how to describe something that I've gone over in my head ten times during the course of my day, when all I want to do is sit down and commit it to paper or Word or a post.

Part of it is because of how the nature of online talk/writing's changed. We're more image/quick text driven. Something has to be quick and snappy or long and rage-filled for it to really hit if it's written, and I hate that. I hate wanting to really get down to something emotional in my own life, only for it to be drowned out.

I've taken leave from Tumblr and Twitter for most of the past week because of current events. I've wanted to write something about that to explain why, even though I'm ultimately not that important in the scheme of the internet or fandom or whatever for people to miss me enough or to notice. Like, who cares? I have gone days just reblogging dog photos on Tumblr and retweeting blithe things and never talking about anything substantial.

People who know me only from Twitter or Tumblr and through my Captain America or Corgi squee don't know about my anxiety diagnosis, at least in part because I don't talk about it because I don't want to burden anyone. They don't know that I spend inordinate amounts of time in my head and trying to figure out if I'm failing at being a woman, at being black American, at being an adult. They don't know me as well as people who've known me since I've been supersyncspaz7 or whatever pre @chaoticgirlie or viewparadise username you've come to know me under.

The thing of it is this: more and more, I feel like Tumblr is this field of mines I have to navigate through. I struggle constantly with this idea of being a socially responsible person, of going back and forth of whether or not I am obligated to subject myself to viewing of every single atrocity that comes across my dash and trying to muster the energy to block it because it makes me feel off-kilter and crazy and like maybe, maybe I should stop trying because the odds are so deeply stacked against me and the whole world is against me and all of us.

And that's not what I'm there for, you know? I am there for immersing myself in the things that make me feel like life is worth it. Superhero stuff. 90s nostalgia. Good news about the world. Ten thousand freaking dog blogs. Everyone is free to use media in the way they want, and I am not going to condone anyone for doing what they damn want, but sometimes you have to get to the point in which you have to decide what is best for you, and this break for me has brought me to that.

Thing About Me Worth Knowing: I am a sentimental idiot. This is at least part of the reason why I haven't changed my LJ handle in all the years I've been on the site. (The only reason enamoured is my DW name is because it wasn't taken, and as much as I love my LJ name, I wanted something different.) I can't quite bring myself to delete my Tumblr, as there's thousands of posts and six years attached to that name--and, okay, I'm greedy too, and want to keep that screen name.

But I've got to change something about my relationship with the site. I'm going to have to either block or stop following some people who I care about and really like so that I won't feel hopeless or angry or just inadequate following them. I'm trying to compartmentalize and sort and figure out how to best deal with this, because I've felt more relieved in the days during this hiatus than I have in, well, a while. I've still had the work and real life problems getting on me, but I haven't felt the need to go to my dashboard seeking some relief only to find the latest in Oh God, Everything is Awful.

I don't know. I'm trying--always trying--to be a better person and to do what is best for me. I don't know how to always get both of those things working at the same time.

( So, my subconscious is awful. )

On the non-crappy front: I SURVIVED MY SPEAKING TEST IN FRENCH. I got Bs in pronunciation and grammar and an A in vocabulary and fluency. I just have to get a B on the final and I'll be good. Speaking of the final: it's on my birthday. There's been only like, one time in my college career that I have not had a final on my birthday because finals ended before the tenth. UGH. At least it's my last final. I had my critique in 3D design today (I have pictures of my project to share, which I am SO going to do because it was fun and awesome), and tomorrow I have my critique in digital photo--and I have to leave and get prints made soon, because I and a few other people had issues with ordering ours through the company that our instructor recommended.

I have this deep urge to do one of those headcanon memes, except A.) I'm not established/cool enough for people to request them, so B.) I'm pretty sure that no one really cares, and besides, C.) I get kind of weirdly possessive about things that I like to take as my own headcanon/fan theories. For example, there's a few recurring things that I've been kicking around in my head, re: Avengers movieverse, but I want to include them in this never-ending fic that I'm writing, so I don't want to say anything about it 'til it makes the story and I post it. Is that weird? Does anyone else do that, like, make up stuff and REFUSE to breathe a word about some ultimately minute detail until you write it down?

To close: again, if you want a card from me, comment here (for DWers) or here (for LJers) with your address and stuff! Or simply email it to me (supersyncspaz7 at gmail.com).

Dear Yuletide Writer:

Hi! Sorry about the delay in posting my letter. Hopefully, this will reach you ASAP and shouldn't be too much of a problem.

So, due to some awesome algorithm/voodoo/hiccup of the universe, you get to write something for me. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Just kidding.

But to start off, here's a general idea of what I usually like in my fic. I am enamored of romantic comedy type tropes (meet cutes, snarky banter flirting, one party being slightly less experienced than the other), and comedy/silliness overall. But at the same time I also love drama--just not drama for the sake of drama and angst for the sake of angst. Like, death just so that the characters can be depressed and possibly driven to self-harm or suicide? NO THANK YOU.

I like it when characters sometimes just have conversations, especially if there's something else going on underneath it; a little bit of double meaning or double entendre, whichever. I like friends as supporting characters being goofy and/or hammy, and happy/upbeat or bittersweet endings. I love it when there are references to little details in canon, and I LOVE romantic tension that's just about thisclose to being resolved and there's only a faint allusion to it possibly happening later.

Or, you know, the "fireworks/train going through a tunnel" route.

Ratings-wise, I'd say as long as it's not greater than R, I'm good.

( And now to the fandoms. )

I hope this was helpful! Can't wait to see what you cook up. And thank you!

I've worked all weekend. Yesterday, they switched the playlist over from country to pop/Top 40. Within the span of an hour I heard both "Call Me Maybe" and "What Makes You Beautiful". I didn't mind the former, because that song has been cycling through my head for weeks now (and, oh man, the video! Go watch it NOW!), but "What Makes You Beautiful" has kind of been on my oh please God no don't let them start playing this at work list since the first time I heard it.

But not only did they play the regular version, they also played the remix.

Last night, after watching The Great Escape (I always forget that it's an almost three hour long movie, so it was late when it was over), I could not sleep. So I was lying in bed with my Kindle Fire reading Avengers fan fiction (as I've been doing for a few nights now), and while I was reading some story, all of a sudden my brain starts going:

BABY YOU LIGHT UP THE WORLD LIKE NOBODY ELSE YOU DON'T KNOW-OH-OH

And now I hate everything about One Direction. (Except for Zayn's face. Boy is super-cute. Way too young, but super-cute.)

Relatedly: it blows my mind that tickets are already on sale for One Direction's arena tour next summer. I mean, what? WE NEVER HAD IT THAT GOOD IN THE '90S. [shakes fists menacingly]

Anyway.

I have written more fan fiction in the past two weeks than I have in years, thanks to The Avengers. I'm writing something with Steve and Darcy for het_bigbang, and really, I do not know how I ended up shipping that, but I do and it's kind of fun and terrifying, in that I have to write 10,000 words of them doing stuff in New York--and having only been there once when I was about nine, I have to say that my knowledge of the city is largely shaped by whatever I've seen in movies/on TV/read about in books. So there's that.

Tangent: recently I realized that I've wanted to go to/live in New York since I was a kid because of the books I read, starting with Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.

This post is all over the place, and if you've gotten this far, congratulations!

I had the most ridiculous dream: I was sitting in my car, and I was dictating the first two parts of my Yuletide story to myself. And then this woman shows up with three kids in tow and demands to get in my van, because she's escaping from her evil, abusive ex-boyfriend who has this other woman with him, and they are both wielding bricks.

And now I can't remember a single thing about the story. And the first sentence was good, too!

ARRRGH.

Have you heard about womenlovefest? Well, now you have. It's a weeklong fete celebrating the women/girls/ladies in fandom who are disliked/hated on/ignored/etc. This totally piqued my interest because I invariably end up loving a lot of the female characters that are hated in whatever fandom I'm into (hello Ashley and Emma from Degrassi, Kate from Lost, Bonnie from The Vampire Diaries, and Rose, Martha, Donna, and Amy from Doctor Who!), save for a few rare cases.

(I also tend to ship the couples that are doomed or not the end game ones, but that is an entirely different matter all together.)

ANYWAY. The character I'm spotlighting this week is Rachel Berry from Glee. I will go into the why part tomorrow, but in the meantime, have a graphic I made a few months ago:

( Only some people get what they want. Those are the people who show up to get it. )

Thing I was thinking about the other night: songs that are overused on fanmixes.

You know, the ones that everyone kind of defaults on. For the longest it was "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls, and I know that "The Scientist" by Coldplay gets used a lot too. Lately, on mixes for ships that are angsty I've seen "Rolling in the Deep" popping up--and that's what kind of spawned my wondering about the songs that start to feel a bit like fanmix cliche.

Well, that, and I was thinking of putting "The Scientist" on one of my own mixes.

(Do I get points for using a lesser-well used Coldplay track on a mix?)

Other thing that I've been thinking about: being followed by prolific people on various sites.

There's always that hierarchical thing that goes on at some sites/in blog circles. You know, how there's someone who's seen as high profile, and it seems like everyone follows them and references their posts, and they get tons of comments/retweets/reblogs (depending on your server) and you're like, Oh man, this person is so cool. And then sometimes that person will start following you, and you're like, "YAY!... oh, wait, NO! WHY?!"

I started thinking about that because I've gotten Tumblr-followed by people like that, and I'm all, I am the least cool person ever in comparison to them. I'm not outspoken, I post a lot of pictures of puppies, and I am prime silly. It's weird, but that thought never really leaves me. I think I'm cool most of the time, but when other people think I am I feel the urge to say how uncool I am in comparison. I need to work on that.

Also, I am trying to write fan fiction again and I am having minor insecurity moments over it--even though it's for an anon thing. What is wrong with me.

I'm going through my folder of stuff I've written, just surveying it all (and missing the box of diskettes that has been lost for a few years now and contains a lot of my writing from late middle school and early high school that isn't notebook bound), and I came across this snippet of something I was planning on incorporating in the Silly Teen Romance:

For all of their tip-giving and advice offered in Technicolor letters across their glossy covers, teen magazines don't give the proper protocol for how to react when your best friend-slash-guy you had kind of had an ongoing thing for all but dumps you. Maybe it's just because of the very nature of that sort of relationship. You're not official, so there is no need to mourn and cry, and it's not totally unrequited so you need not feel like you have to suffer in some sort of noble silence. And because no one tells you how to feel during a situation like this, your options are severely limited and mostly socially unacceptable, and they include wanting to:

1. Shove Best Friend-Slash-Guy You Kind of Had an Ongoing Thing For off of a very tall building,


2. Eviscerate the girl that he has picked over you,


3. Run to your dorm room, lock the door, scream, and generally attempt to rid your personal space of anything that remotely reminds you of that rat bastard,


4. Do all of the above in no particular order.

I could not do any of those things, as it would make me look like I was on the brink of a major meltdown.

I've changed the work a lot since I wrote that. The last edit I did on that document was in like, March and since then, I've changed the tense of the story and changed character names and other stuff. Similarly, a few days ago I was reading this Google Docs file I had done about characters in the Boarding School Epic of Doom, and I forgot that I ended up scrapping this one character who was part of this subplot for another one, and there that character was, right in my notes.

In non-writing things: the Dallas Mavericks won the Finals, and that means MORE WORK HOURS THIS WEEK. Well, not in my department; I've been a cashier. I worked 12 to 6 yesterday and I'm going in 1 to 7 tomorrow. I stayed after on Sunday when we reopened to sell the championship shirts, and I had a customer whistle and shriek "GO MAVS!" very loudly in my ear and one who got mad because someone forgot to take down the signs about all Mavs gear being 25% off (that deal had ended Saturday).

I love how I will off-handedly mention weird things on Twitter and then I get followed by people who promote those things. I jokingly said I wanted an electric car a few days ago and I get two new followers who post stuff about electric cars.

Oh, and I finally posted my mix for My Most Excellent Year!

I went to the doctor today, and found out that I don't have strep. But! I do have some other kind of infection in the throat that's left it all splotchy and strep-like, only minus the fever and everything. I'm on antibiotics for the next ten days. Whee.

But that's not the entire point of this update. Mostly, it's about this weird-as-hell dream I had, in which I was for reasons unknown Bella Swan. That Bella Swan.

In the dream, Edward had turned me (I... think the whole thing with Reneesme didn't happen because I remember no Deathbaby), and the day after we had to go to school, and I (me-as-Bella, that is) was worried that everyone would notice that there was something Not Right with me. And then something happened, and the Cullens' cover was blown, so they were all, "ZOMG WE HAVE TO LEAVE NOOOOOW" and had rented out a train to go to Canada. And Edward was all, "You must come with me!" and I kept going back and forth because me-as-Bella loved him, but at the same time me-as-Bella didn't want to run off to the wilderness in Canada. So all the Cullens piled onto the train and Edward went off somewhere to sulk, and they left me-as-Bella alone in my newfound sparkly undead state to be at the mercy of everyone else in Forks.

...I don't get it either. I'm not gonna think too hard about it. Instead, I am going to try to find time in my schedule to see The Proposal, because looking at Ryan Reynolds for two hours can make everything better, I'm sure.