I'm Not Dead! And I Have Hobbies, Too!
May. 27th, 2019 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randomfatechidnaI've been working on myself and university and some fannish projects that I'm excited about and now that I have a moment, am ready to share.
Firstly, I recently produced and printed a bound hardcover version of Tara Gilesbie's infamous fanfiction My Immortal, which I am immensely proud of. Producing it was the first time I've read it through properly, and boy was I not disappointed. (I was, however, impressed that it actually had plot.) It confirmed my belief that I don't think the story was written in earnest, despite the time period it was written in. Even if the author comes clean and says it was written sincerely, I'm not sure that I would believe it. It's just too consistently bad, tbh.
To format the book, I used LaTeX on Overleaf.com, using the Fiction Book source code as my base. I imported all the text, wrote a preface, coded the chapters, and then used some StackOverflow code to generate the 8 page signature PDF (flipping on the long edge when printed). I folded the pages into signatures, sewed them up, using one of SeaLemon on YouTube's excellent tutorials, and then glued it to the cover, which was some wrapping paper from Big W.
At the moment, I'm working on formatting The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle writeup into another book. I always want to go back and refer to it when I'm discussing Cassandra Claire's (Clare? Claire? Who knows?) various exploits and so I think a clean, plaintext version in hardcover would do me quite well. I'm about halfway through importing all the text, but I do have to go back and unbold things and remove links and such. I'm very excited to finish it! I can't wait to get to the folding pages and sewing them together bit, because then I have something to do in front of Netflix.
Another project I'm working on is a podfic version of my kiradax fic, the world goes blue. It's a very self indulgent fic, and it's only right that I indulge myself further by gifting myself a nice, clean podfic version (hopefully including bloopers, too, which I've recently discovered is my favourite part of listening to other people's podfic).
My last pet project is a lengthy (for me) The Strange Case of Starship Iris fic, which explores how Violet and Arkady might eventually say I love you, and how that would take place. (ETA 07/06/19: You can find the director's cut of the fic here) It's also a meditation on belonging to place and people, and continuing a personal tradition of using Regina Spektor's "Better" to inspire fanwork. It's been written and rewritten a billion times at this point, after working on it for over a month, and at this post I just want to post it, incomplete, to get it out there, but I really want to get it right. The tone changes constantly, because it was originally a blatant angsty self-insert that was never going to see the light of day, but then I deleted the moody parts of it because it didn't fit the tone of the rest of the fic, and I convinced myself I should rework it to post it, and here I am, a month later, still working on it. It's currently sitting at almost 5k (4700 words), and it's the second longest thing I've ever written. I'm hoping to finish it soon, now that my relisten is over and I want to post a Director's Commentary/Cut of it as well, if I ever finish it.
Aside from fandom things, I've been working at hard at staying afloat on uni stuff. Who knew programming was so time consuming and difficult? (Me. I knew. And yet I pursued Computer Science anyway. Hmm.) I also have a research paper to finish, and a bunch little quizzes to study for, as well as exams, too. I've been really pushed. Also, I've been seeing friends and trying to work through a lot of insecurities I have about my life at the moment. It's been incredibly taxing on my emotions, but I'm hoping that the conclusion of this semester might hold some resolutions to Real Life things that have been a drain on my mental energy.
I've been very busy, but I also feel a new page in my life coming, and I want to be the best, most interesting person I can in order to meet it.
Firstly, I recently produced and printed a bound hardcover version of Tara Gilesbie's infamous fanfiction My Immortal, which I am immensely proud of. Producing it was the first time I've read it through properly, and boy was I not disappointed. (I was, however, impressed that it actually had plot.) It confirmed my belief that I don't think the story was written in earnest, despite the time period it was written in. Even if the author comes clean and says it was written sincerely, I'm not sure that I would believe it. It's just too consistently bad, tbh.
To format the book, I used LaTeX on Overleaf.com, using the Fiction Book source code as my base. I imported all the text, wrote a preface, coded the chapters, and then used some StackOverflow code to generate the 8 page signature PDF (flipping on the long edge when printed). I folded the pages into signatures, sewed them up, using one of SeaLemon on YouTube's excellent tutorials, and then glued it to the cover, which was some wrapping paper from Big W.
At the moment, I'm working on formatting The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle writeup into another book. I always want to go back and refer to it when I'm discussing Cassandra Claire's (Clare? Claire? Who knows?) various exploits and so I think a clean, plaintext version in hardcover would do me quite well. I'm about halfway through importing all the text, but I do have to go back and unbold things and remove links and such. I'm very excited to finish it! I can't wait to get to the folding pages and sewing them together bit, because then I have something to do in front of Netflix.
Another project I'm working on is a podfic version of my kiradax fic, the world goes blue. It's a very self indulgent fic, and it's only right that I indulge myself further by gifting myself a nice, clean podfic version (hopefully including bloopers, too, which I've recently discovered is my favourite part of listening to other people's podfic).
My last pet project is a lengthy (for me) The Strange Case of Starship Iris fic, which explores how Violet and Arkady might eventually say I love you, and how that would take place. (ETA 07/06/19: You can find the director's cut of the fic here) It's also a meditation on belonging to place and people, and continuing a personal tradition of using Regina Spektor's "Better" to inspire fanwork. It's been written and rewritten a billion times at this point, after working on it for over a month, and at this post I just want to post it, incomplete, to get it out there, but I really want to get it right. The tone changes constantly, because it was originally a blatant angsty self-insert that was never going to see the light of day, but then I deleted the moody parts of it because it didn't fit the tone of the rest of the fic, and I convinced myself I should rework it to post it, and here I am, a month later, still working on it. It's currently sitting at almost 5k (4700 words), and it's the second longest thing I've ever written. I'm hoping to finish it soon, now that my relisten is over and I want to post a Director's Commentary/Cut of it as well, if I ever finish it.
Aside from fandom things, I've been working at hard at staying afloat on uni stuff. Who knew programming was so time consuming and difficult? (Me. I knew. And yet I pursued Computer Science anyway. Hmm.) I also have a research paper to finish, and a bunch little quizzes to study for, as well as exams, too. I've been really pushed. Also, I've been seeing friends and trying to work through a lot of insecurities I have about my life at the moment. It's been incredibly taxing on my emotions, but I'm hoping that the conclusion of this semester might hold some resolutions to Real Life things that have been a drain on my mental energy.
I've been very busy, but I also feel a new page in my life coming, and I want to be the best, most interesting person I can in order to meet it.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-27 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-28 03:56 am (UTC)Uni is wild. Graduations have just happened and I couldn't be more jealous of them!
no subject
Date: 2019-05-29 10:27 pm (UTC)Good luck with the podfic! I need to go edit the recording I did for mine. That's the hard part. Talking? Easy. Editing? *pitches computer out the window*
no subject
Date: 2019-05-30 09:01 pm (UTC)I am very excited to be able to put Otherwise Occupied in my ears though!!