if i fail, let me be wormfood.

this is as good a place as any to put long-form thoughts down about iaidō, so... here's the start of the iaidō tag for this journal.

i think i did pretty well in last night's embu! i was really warmed by M-san's comment that i didn't seem rushed at all, and that my wazas felt calm. i tried very hard to slow down and be deliberate, but perhaps a little too much—R-sensei accidentally cut me off at four wazas instead of five, which i honestly think is hilarious because it keeps happening to members of our dojo. i am a little sad that i didn't get to actually do shihōtō sono ichi as planned, mostly because M-san had given me a small correction that i really wanted to get at least one more repetition of. the two shihōtō wazas are still hard for me.

i've been working on straightening out my ōchiburi since i noticed last embu when watching the recording that i was doing something really off with it, and looking at the small handful of photos someone sent out already, i'm... still doing something really off with it. i have no idea wtf i'm doing wrong, much less how to fix it. M-sensei gave me a correction a little while ago, but i think i need something more. i'm really going to try to drill it during our cul-de-sac practices this summer. i'll probably ask my senpais wtf is going on since i'm, uh, way less intimidated by them than i am by any of our senseis, lmao.

the other thing that really stood out to me from the photos was my line of sight. R-sensei had linked us to a great blog post about metsuke that i've been thinking about a lot; M-sensei's metsuke is so subtle yet so forceful, and i would love to have even a fraction of that someday. it's also interesting to compare it to R-sensei's, since he's a stage actor—you can really feel the acting of it, and it's really fascinating. it's still a little hard for me to really visualize the teki when i'm doing a waza; i mostly use the "narrative" of a waza to make sense of what happens when and how, but last night when we were running through our wazas before the embu, i had a moment of real clarity and visualization... when doing kaishaku*, of all wazas. maybe it's because it's extremely clear what's happening and the teki isn't moving, but i could really just see where the teki was supposed to be. and then i looked back at the photos from the embu itself, and my line of sight during the embu was just straight forward! not where i was actually supposed to be looking, which changes throughout a waza! i never thought that this taekwondo habit would be so hard to break, but it's also been my presentation/public speaking fake eye contact habit for many years, too, so... it's turning out to be pretty hard to break, lol.

so i suppose the two things i want to work on while we're on our little summer break are that goddamn ōchiburi and getting my metsuke into better shape. one much more actionable step than just "hey fix your shit" is to pay attention to my line of sight during noto—i'm going to focus on that piece.

*this post is mostly for me to track where i am, but if you are reading this out of curiosity, kaishaku is a waza in which your role is that of assistant to someone committing seppuku; it's never performed "in public" (i.e., at an event like an embu), but it's still taught since iaidō is considered a traditional martial art.

first and foremost, if you are Here, thank you for going on this fic journey with me in whichever way you’ve done so. this has been a really interesting writing experience for me, and i had a ton of fun posting something weekly again.

i said this over and over in the posts i was making as i worked on this fic, but i tried a lot of new things, and it was really challenging. i think this was the most challenging fic i’ve written, maybe ever, just because it required me to consciously do a lot of things i don’t usually do rather than just being on my bullshit as per usual. P vs NP and no quarter, the only other fics whose word counts and complexity this one rivals, were a lot easier to write, relatively speaking, because, like, it’s just (""""just"""") halo lore. it’s just action/adventure bullshit (affectionate). however, nothing about the plot structure of this fic came naturally to me, so it took some real effort to get this to be what i wanted it to be.

starting off with some miscellaneous notes:

( away we go )

"i think i'll wait till next week to post," i said, like a lying liar who lies. nah!

today i read over what i wrote this week, and it's really solid. way more solid than i thought it was when i was writing it, honestly. it's hard to estimate the word count since i had a bunch of bits and pieces written beforehand, but i think i did about 7k words this week across two chapters, mostly; there are things i want to go back and add or flesh out in those last three chapters, but after closing up the last major gaps in the front half of the fic, i really am ready for this to go out and see the world. i think i'll post tomorrow evening, depending on how busy the rest of the day is, and if not, possibly sunday (though i'll have a long day of travel). doesn't really matter.

for now, i feel solid about the first five chapters, and the first three in particular; i know i'll pick at chapters 5 and 6 before posting, and i've got bullet points written out for several point in chapter 7 that i want to clean up or flesh out, and more of the same for 8 and 9. i've had a very clear vision for 10 for a while, and i'm feeling good about that one; no specific bullet-point notes there from today's pass, just a general edit.

man! i'm excited to start publishing this fic. i have a few friends whose reactions i'm really looking forward to.

here's a fact about me that, if you didn't already know it, i think really draws a complete picture of me: i joined tumblr in early 2010 and stayed very firmly on the Hipster Side for quite a while. my stray to the Fandom Side was honestly very gradual; i still follow aesthetic photography blogs, and i lost touch with the last of the old guard of fandom friends that overlapped with hipster friends only in the great purge of 2018.

here's another fact: i just listened to brand new for the very first time today.

( Read more... )

words about words! i'm writing a long...er fic again and, as always, i have Thoughts. (primarily: oh god the word count keeps going up help)

for last year, one of the goals i set (and achieved!) was to write a humorous fic — something funny for the sake of being funny. i really, really love reading humorous fics and i'd tried multiple times to write something start-to-finish humorous (i'm pretty sure there's at least one author's note on my fics saying something like "well this was supposed to be funny"), but i didn't actually achieve it until in stitches. none of the fic i've posted since then has been explicitly humorous start-to-finish, but i've noticed that in general, humor has become much more present as i'm writing; the conscious effort it took to write something humorous really made an impression on me, and i've been wanting to do it again.

so here i am! 15k words into an explicitly humorous fic. with much more to go.

( help )

i've been in a major reading slump for a long time now, and somehow last year i started to read a bunch of nonfiction, which i'd never really gone for before, ever. i also had a realization today while mulling over the histrom i'm about 75% of the way through that i really like the problem-solving more than the romance itself, lol. anyways! words about words.

( misc. nonfiction, mostly fashion )

( back to histrom baybee )

it feels good to be reading again! it's been really good to get into reading nonfiction; i'm finding it very easy to pick up and put down rather than getting sucked in like i do with novels or longfic.

word count for posted works: 38,500 (+ 907*) words
word count for unposted works (incl. wips): 36,326 words
total word count: 74,826 words

( works posted to AO3 in 2024 )

( general thoughts )

( goals for 2025 )

word count for posted works: 77,080 words
word count for unposted works (incl. wips): 34,320 words
total word count: 111,400 words

breakdown of works, meme, and goals below!

( works posted to AO3 in 2023 )

( unfinished/unposted works in 2023 )

( end-of-year meme! )

( goals for 2024 )

no quarter is done! and holy shit, i just realized that this makes it six months to the day.

( ...hey basia, did you start writing this fic on christmas day? )

( the journey (and everyone i dragged into hell with me) )

( brief detour: rvb17 )

( the actual writing part )

all in all: very satisfied with this fic. glad that it was this that pulled me back to rvb and that i got so much out of it.

EDIT: also tracked word count in gdocs vs. AO3 (per chapter) this time around! it was very interesting: gdocs has 51,630 words and AO3 has 51,765 words, and the word count discrepancy was all over the place. some chapters had a difference of about 10-15 words (and seemingly no pattern as to whether AO3 would be less or more than gdocs), and one chapter was about 90 words less in AO3 than gdocs. three chapters had the exact same word count. 🤷‍♂️ i can only guess this has something to do with how AO3 and gdocs each parse hyphenations.

wow, it's been a while. to get right into it, this post was sparked specifically because earlier today i drove a nice big loop around the area — incidentally, it was the same drive i referenced at the end of this post. truly mindblowing how life changes.

in any case, hi, i'm writing rvb longfic again (hi writing rvb longfic again), i have navel-gazey thoughts on writing itself.

( wuh oh how does markdown work again )

DW still feels like a nicer place to put Fic Thoughts than tungle, even though i'm using tungle regularly again. i should go back to putting fic thoughts here. :B