shadro

I see the UN has finally officially declared that the genocide in Gaza is, indeed, a genocide. Thanks for finally chiming in on that one, guys, I've spent these last two years all in a tizzy of uncertainty.

People are speaking up who didn't before, countries are threatening to drop out of Eurovision, sanctions are being threatened and even carried out, IDF members are being banned as tourists. Late is better than never but ffs. It turns out that it really is that easy, huh? Can you imagine if they'd all done this from the beginning? Or even a few months in? Even a year ago? So many lives could've been saved.

Not sure what it was today but I could hardly make myself get anything done that I wanted to. I suppose it might've started with deciding not to do the farmers market. That would've gotten me up and moving. Only I don't regret not going. Aside from the hassle of taking the bus, it was stupid hot, stupid early. Not the weather I'd anticipated when I was considering going. So, Idk.

Anyhow, the day wasn't a total loss. I cleaned out the fridge, which I've been meaning to do for ages. I got a lot of reading done, too, though, I'm at a part in the book where second-hand embarrassment is making it hard to focus, lol. Phil's new screen arrive, so that's taken care of. I might even do a little writing before bed still. I haven't given up on finishing something this weekend.

The downside of freely flowing creative writing juices, for me, is that I have all these new ideas now like I'm not already juggling too many wips. Like. Do you ever have a summary pop fully formed into your head, that you're compelled to figure out the story for? That's something that hasn't happened to me in... years, I think?? And it only happened a couple-few times in the first place. Yet in just this past week-- in just the past few days, really-- it's happened three times.

And that's not even bothering with the several story ideas that I still have to figure out summaries for if and when I ever get around to writing them, lol.

But, hey, can't complain too much, I guess. It's unwieldy, sure, but I just need to apply that energy properly. I feel like I might even get a couple of things finished this weekend!

So, I took a jar of vegetable stock out of the fridge to see if it was still any good. And I guess I just don't know how to hold stuff anymore, because I almost immediately dropped the jar, shattering it. Managed to do it in such a way that it busted my thumb nail off below the quick too.

The kicker? The stock, as I was very carefully cleaning it up, looked and smelled fine.

Got my charity squares done! As expected, I had enough yarn left over from each mini-skein to make some little flower appliques. Three from one and four from the other, somehow. I'd thought my tension was pretty steady throughout. Might've had to do with the tails I cut, I guess; I'm not super attentive to that. Ah, well. They may or may not be used for the project anyway. The squares are the important thing and I'm happy with those.

Watched some more Beast Wars while I was at it. I'm on the last season now. Weird to think I'm so close to finishing, after I procrastinated so hard on starting. I've got all sorts of half-formed fic ideas in my head, as if I needed any more, lol.

Didn't do any writing today (yet-- still gonna try to squeeze some in before bed) but I did finish another book. It was a Gilgamesh retelling and only around a hundred and twenty pages but still. A book is a book and that's one more off my shelves. Maybe. Think I might keep this one, actually. I've developed an interest in different translations and retellings of the old epics. This one didn't do much for me but I'm still curious to compare it to other versions. Curious enough to hold onto a book I didn't much care for? Ehh. Like I said, maybe. It's pretty slim, at least.

Icy cold take coming through: I hate spambots.

Any kind of spambot, really, but my hatred today has been ignited by spambots that pollute fandom spaces. I barely check my fanfiction.net alerts anymore because they've overrun the place. If you've not been there in a minute, this may be shocking, on account of it's incredibly ridiculous. But, nonetheless, it's true! I and others I know who still have accounts there have been inundated with floods of poorly-written, cookie cutter gushing over our work and offers to "collaborate" on art pieces and comics based on it. Or "commission offers" as if legitimate artists frequently reach out to fanfic writers to find clients. This gushing frequently has nothing to do with the works themselves, as if they weren't obviously enough fake. I think my favorites overall are the ones that send DMs saying they loved my story. Which story? Y'know, mine! 9__9

I'm more or less used to having to clear out at least a couple dozen of these when I check my FFN account messages. Doesn't stop them from being annoying, of course, but I don't have enough hope to be disappointed anymore, at least. I'm not used to dealing with these among my scant AO3 comments, on the other hand. So when someone commented on a fic asking if they could share a thought, I was excited at the idea of talking to someone about the fandom or the characters or the rarepair it featured. And I was only a little bit wary when they asked if I wanted to talk off-site. Wouldn't be the first time I exchanged Skype or Discord or something with someone I met there, though I wasn't fully prepared, based on bad past experiences, to do so willy-nilly this time. So, I asked what it was they wanted to take off-site and they came back saying only that they wanted to discuss an illustration and that's when the disappointment slapped me in the face. I double-checked, saw that they were a new, empty account and blocked. Ugh.

What really gets me about these, I think, aside from the obvious, is that I have had actual, real people who were interested in expanding on my work before. Several of my femslash drabbles have been translated into French; another has been translated into Chinese; a longer EEnE one-shot has been translated into Spanish. Someone asked permission to translate something into Russian and another someone for permission to do a podfic of something else. Neither of those people got around to doing those things but they were real people and they asked. As for artwork specifically, someone once did an illustration for that same EEnE fic that was translated and I only found out when I stumbled across it in the fandom tags on Tumblr because they were too shy to tag me. Someone else once wrote a fic based on a post I made. And, I mean, I know it's not just me. All the time, I see translations, illustrations, fics inspired by fics, by fanart, by discussion posts and idle questions. Heck, I did a short fic once inspired by fanart. I did another-- maybe two others-- based on posts I saw. Fandom is community and plenty of fanwork is collaborative, one way or another. Of course people do commission artists for illustrations of their fics-- I've done that too-- and maybe even for fics to accompany their art, Idk. But real people aren't out here, as a general rule, offering to let you give them money in exchange for ~collaborating. And it really sticks in my teeth that the people behind these bots are sending them out to do this like it's the way fandom works.

I received my Republic of Yarnia monthly subscription package that includes the mini-skeins to make squares for the raffle blanket I told you guys about. At the same time as I received last month's subscription package, no less. I was just on the verge of convincing myself that I had already received that package and misplaced it somewhere, lol. Gotta love the state of US postal services and imports right now...

Anyway, I'm going to start my squares this weekend. My immediate intention was to combine the two colorways I received but the completed blanket is intended to have a gradient look, so that's out. No special patterns immediately come to mind for a single-color square but I know a few exist that would be nice. Each mini-skein should make at least two squares of the proper size, assuming I don't pick something that goes through a lot of yarn-- which, obviously, I don't intend to. I might do one basic granny square and one more creative square of each color. Just gonna have to keep gauge in mind, whatever I do, so that they can be properly attached to each other.