clo_again

Just fyi, if anyone still needs an AO3 invite code then hit me up; I have eight just sitting there now.

I'm really enjoying idly checking out my friends list (reading page, yeah yeah) here and being surprised repeatedly that there are posts! Posts since yesterday, more posts than I remember there being in ages! Y'all, I know how fast these things can die away but what if we made Dreamwidth what LJ was. What if we have comms and fic posts and actual comment conversations. What if.

In that light, I have very little to actually say (I'm supposed to be writing right now hah hah) except that we did Team English House Christmas for the second year running yesterday and it was so nice to have an entire day of quiet movies (The Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding is terrible oh my god; how can these people NOT ACT TO THIS EXTENT and yet we still watched the entire thing and made Housemate #3 who hadn't even seen The Christmas Prince watch it too, much to his confusion) and good food and presents. Housemate #3 bought me a combined birthday/Xmas present after getting me something I already owned for my birthday originally and having to return it) so, unexpectedly, he got me Pokemon Let's Go: Eevee. I'm limiting how much I'm allowed to play when I haven't finished Breath of the Wild or half the things I'm writing, but so far it's disconcertingly like going back in time to play Pokemon Red/Blue again and just as bizarrely addictive. I love my Eevee (Evi) but I'm already wary of running out of pokeballs with the sheer number of pokemon running around. It's great that you can sort of avoid the wild pokemon if you decide you need to get somewhere in a hurry though; that's a great upgrade from the original games. I'm already impatient to start catching Charmanders and Vulpix so I can get me my Charizards and Ninetails (Ninetailses? Ninetailsi?) again.

Having a full time job is very inconvenient when I just want to play Pokemon Let's Go: Eevee. I mean, being able to afford to eat is pretty nice but I could do with each day being twice as long. Work is also... A Thing right now. I don't know. I might know more tomorrow how stressful the next few months might be or it might drag out and, I don't know. It'd be easier overall to win the lottery or inherit a trust fund tomorrow so I can quit to write full time and play Pokemon without guilt, basically.


But I can't. So instead, and in the name of adding to the Dreamwidth Resurgence, have a tennis fic snippet. I wrote this a few months back thinking I'd carry on and make it a Christmas fic surprise but that's looking less likely the closer we get to Christmas (oh god I am so completely not organised this year) so have a snippet anyway. Sascha/Roger with background Andy/Novak; overall the entire fic plan has Sascha/Dominic, Sascha/Roger, Sascha/Novak, (are you sensing a theme?) with a variety of other pairings because I thought months ago 'what if the big four players took the top four next-gen/up and coming players away for a Christmas "training session" every year, only it was actually an excuse to play a mini round-robin competition where the winners got to consensually sleep with the losers in a glorious week of fun times for all with surprise Meaningful Feelings because those are the best kind, and then this happened. Maybe one day I'll finish it.


( untitled tennis fic snippet, Christmas secret training sessions, sascha/roger, E )

I am supposedly a tennis fan but it took a throwaway comment on a tennis blog for me to find out that Andy Murray had shingles back in February. Thanks, endless rounds of news coverage, professional tennis commentary, and tweets about tennis I've seen/heard since then. That kind of information is useful when one oh, is writing RPF about the personage in question.

It also makes me feel better about his generally appalling level of play this year, because the consensus seems to be that he made himself ill through overwork, overtraining, and stress, all of which is fixable (I've concluded that my six-week-long tussle with bronchitis that absolutely floored me for all of January 2016 was the cumulative effect of doing a full-time Masters for a year while working sixteen hours a week, then starting a new full-time job immediately after handing my dissertation in and working flat out until I inevitably keeled over three months later. I made it worse by pretending I wasn't ill and it briefly resurfaced two months later and the only thing that fixed it was taking some time to chill). Murray's played solid for the last three or four months of last year, trained solid for five weeks over Christmas, then made himself ill and tried to keep playing despite his body going WHAT ARE YOU DOING PUT DOWN THE RACQUET OR WE WILL CATCH SOMETHING THAT MAKES YOUR FINGERS FALL OFF.

Which is of course terribly frustrating and concerning for him, but works great for fic. Thanks for being an idiot, Muzz. Now maybe take a vacation.

-

Talking of writing, the thing I'm writing now (which is not the thing I am supposed to be writing, other than this blog post which I am extra not supposed to be writing instead of fic) is a bit strange, and sad, and I keep reading bits and wondering why I'm writing something that I find so disconcerting.

I was trying to write down a scene last night in bed and I kept falling asleep mid-sentence and waking myself up when my iPod hit me in the face, at which point I kept writing until I fell asleep again. In the end I had to summarise how the scene ended and give up. I don't even know if it's any good, or if I'm good enough to write it* but I want it written to get the disconcerting sadness out of my head and onto the paper- er, virtual paper.


* It's really hard on the internet to differentiate between honestly not feeling very good at something but believing the endless peppy tumblr posts about 'everyone feels like this! You're great!', and actually knowing something isn't very good. I wish I could win the lottery and go sit in a quiet empty house for six months to write without having to worry about going to work and being a functional human being and having to wear something that isn't pyjamas so I couldn't procrastinate out of just writing without it mattering, until I feel like I know what I'm doing.

Yesterday in work, the new interim manager told me that being smarter than ninety-five percent of the population was something I'd have to learn how to deal with and I immediately felt under incredible pressure to maintain my appearance of being smart at all times, because clearly I had somehow fooled him and apparently all the other managers into believing I was super capable. I do not understand how I give this impression when I spend some percentage of a work day playing Pokemon Go or, like today, wheat googling Serbian prison systems and Andy's Murray's medical conditions for fic. If that counts as super capable, what is everyone else doing?

I really should stop procrastinating by worrying about writing and just go write something.

I really need to get back in the habit of doing this. I mean, I'm procrastinating from writing to do this but when did I ever post to LJ when I wasn't procrastinating from writing? (tip: I was always procrastinating from writing).

I mean, writing is going pretty well at the moment. For me, anyway; I've posted something within the last week which is a rare enough occurrence to rate as 'pretty well', and the thing I wrote when I had writer's block on the other thing is 2k plus and climbing, so I figure I'll get that done pretty soon before I work on the next chapter of before you come to evening. And I reread 10k of reaction-fic I wrote after Novak lost Wimbledon last year, which I'd relegated to my Dead Letter Box folder (for fic I have no intention of finishing) because I hated it and thought it was boring, but today I enjoyed it and was sad to hit the end of what I'd written, and frustrated. What were you thinking past self? I don't understand; you were on a roll. Quit quitting stuff.

I don't know if I'll finish it. Elements of it surfaced in the coming of the fall which I wrote a couple of months after, but all the set-up is done; the sticking point is that the scene I didn't write was The Scene That Was the Entire Point and Reason which are always the worst. But this one had snuggling. Maybe when Wimbledon rolls around again I'll be reinspired, or I'll post it undone over at clofic maybe, or maybe it'll be my writer's block fic for the next chapter of before. I guess clofic is going to be my work-in-progress dump over here, since all finished stuff is now going on AO3. If you want free snippets, or wips, or fic fanmixes or whatever, follow over there.

The other weird thought that occurred after rereading the Wimbledon Reject Fic; I've spent almost ten months now musing on The Fall of Novak Djokovic in one way or another, and I'm still no closer to having a grip on it or why I care. I've never liked Novak the way I like Roger, or Roddick or Muzz, not in the simple and uncomplicated way of wanting them to win everything they touch and being happy when they do. Novak's disingenuous and desperate for attention; I never quite believe him when he says the sky is blue and grass is green (like when he falls and hurts himself only to win the match, when he says he's injured, when he says he isn't, when he says he's fine when he's clearly losing weight, about to burst into genuine pained tears in the US Open final, when he falls and hits his head so hard in Qatar that Muzz came across the court to check on him), but I'm so used to resenting him for beating Roger and begging for attention and being gloriously untouchable, having him broken and off-colour is disconcerting. I know what I think happened after the French last year but Becker's gone and Jelena's pregnant again because we all know having a second kid when things are miserable is a surefire way to fix life's problems (except for all the ways it isn't) and Novak's still this weird echo of himself.

I don't like worrying about goddamn Novak Djokovic but apparently I am, anyway.

At least Roger is back on glorious GOAT form this year and is doing me a solid by skipping the clay season which I can never watch because it's on when I'm in work. Work is a whole 'nother kettle of fish (mostly not awful, but complicated).

The housing situation is at the opposite end of the extreme and is all kinds of ongoing disaster but I've procrastinated all my time away and anyway, there's not much I can say about it that isn't a complaint. Basically it's stressful and come June (our contract here ends July 3rd) I'm going to be a lot less chill about it than I am right now. Get back to me in a month.

Really gotta start working on posting regularly again, rather than meandering on Twitter for aimless hours. All the shenanigans LJ's pulled with the new TOS are finally giving me the impetus to boot it and move operations over here (or er, restart them over here since they've fallen off the Procrastination Cliff of late).

I don't know if I can bring myself to delete all the posts over there, even when they're backed up here; I certainly can't make myself delete the entire journal. For one, that's over a decade of my history. For two, I still use the Scrapbook because it's easier than sourcing image space anywhere else. Once LJ goes down for good (because let's face it; this kerfuffle is causing a final exodus that can't end well) then I guess I'll need to look into it but until then I'm thinking maybe I'll just private everything except a post directing traffic this way.

I guess I'll need to shift clofic over here as well. All the fic is backed up at Insanejournal (still don't think it's worth the editing it'd need for AO3) but I'd like to hang onto the comments. I should really get moving on that this weekend before LJ shut down the ability for external sites to import stuff which is what I saw predicted on one analysis of the new TOS.

As much as LJ's been the internet equivalent of a sad oldtimer dive bar for years now, I regret not owning any LJ merchandise from back in the day. This thing ran my life for eight-to-ten years; at the very least I'd like a hoodie. Hell, a keyring. I saw a Nirvana t-shirt in Topshop yesterday and for a minute it felt as if I was fourteen again. I wonder if retro LJ merchandise - or Frank the Goat merchandise to be Ultimate Hipster about it - will ever circle back to coolness? I hope so, especially if we can do it without giving actual Russia-owned-modern-LJ a penny for it.

So I don't know; maybe I'll be around more while I shift things over here, curse trying to set up a new DW for clofic, etc. In between those fun things, I'll be attempting to finish the latest fic I posted to AO3 because I thought it'd be a good idea to post another WiP as a motivational move. The jury is out on whether or not this was a spectacularly terrible idea yet, mostly because I had the first two and a half chapters written already so it hasn't become an issue yet (it will. I'm working on it though!).

It's the hooker!Andy Murray fic, because LJ may be circling the drain but some things never change. You can find the first two chapters over on AO3: before you come to evening, e, Murray/Djokovic AU, the one where Andy ended up a prostitute instead of a tennis player through a series of accidents and bad decisions, and Novak's mostly trying not to screw up his life.

*

Life stuff is also happening but it's of the tiresome, housing-is-stressful-and-I-have-not-yet-won-the-lottery-to-sort-it kind, so it can wait until I'm not half asleep and well past a sensible you're-in-work-tomorrow bedtime for someone who's trying to pretend to be an adult. It's fine; I'm not living in a box under the canal bridge yet so hopefully we can take that as an optimistic sign.

We're almost to 2017 everyone! Hang in there!

In the meantime, Merry Christmas/Blessed Yule and Io Saturnalia/happy holidays etc etc. I've spent most of mine attempting to write Rogue One fic without putting too many feet wrong in the thousands of years of history that is the SW universe. It's something that's involved much shouting at Wookieepedia, but also muttering fervent thanks to all the fans who have anticipated questions such as 'Do spaceships in Star Wars run on fuel?' and have kindly written entire essays describing what kinds of fuel, where it's made, who makes it, and who invented it in the first place.

It's really rather impressive. I don't think our actual history is documented this well.

As another note, there's been plenty of stirrings lately about LJ moving their servers to Russia and what this might mean. On top of that, I've seen comments and entries about people having technical issues (such as including links in posts, viewing their friends page etc) and I hit a few myself with the app refusing to load for a few days, the featured posts not loading etc.

All of it adds up to something of a worry that one day soon in a galaxy not so far away, LJ might wink out and that'll be it.

I do have backups - I know where else to find most of you (those who're still here) in the case of catastrophic LJ collapse - but the InsaneJournal I'd backed my posts up to a few years ago was deleted for inactivity and I've rambled occasionally since then anyway, so I've backed everything up on Dreamwidth (clo_again, since some damn person created Clo over on DW in 2009 and has NEVER UPDATED. No, I'm never going to quit being bitter about this).

So just fyi - in the case of the LJ apocalypse or just the general apocalypse given the way the world is going, you'll be able to find me here DW at clo_again, or from my profile here to other social media/AO3, for as long as the lights stay on.

I don't really know what to do with LJ - people are deleting/purging because hey, Russia, but this is a lot of history and I don't know if that's an overreaction. I'm more concerned about the fic, but that's all backed up over on Insanejournal anyway.

I'm so ready for 2016 to be over, y'all. It's been a hell of a year.

I was just reading (read: procrastinating from writing) Versaphile's post about importing old fic to AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/5644.

I'm massively anti-deleting fanfic - I feel that once something has been released to run wild on the internet, you have no idea really who's read it or what impact that had on them, even if it's yours, even if it has your name on it; once it's posted, it should stay available somewhere forever. On the flipside, I've always been firmly set on not importing my old fic to AO3 because most of it I feel needs more editing than I'm happy doing, or was written when I still had no clue what I was doing other than bashing out words in a vague succession of sense, or is frankly (imho) terrible. All my old stuff is sitting around on clofic or in a much neater indexed collection on Insanejournal and that's fine. It isn't as if I'm locking it in a drawer; if anyone wants it, my username is the same everywhere.

But then- reading Versaphile talk about archiving fandom history and how important it is made me think that's irresponsible. Likewise the level of outrage I went through listening to a podcast discussing tennis slash last year, with a panel of four tennis ficcers who flat out stated that tennis slash "started around 2007 with Nadal/Federer" (hahahahaha I guess we all hallucinated all that Roddick/Federer fic that happened 2004-onwards, or that there was at least one person writing Roddick/Ferrero before that which no longer exists because the original tennis fic comm got deleted) implies that maybe fandom history is already getting fuzzy. Like all the teenies on tumblr who keep LOLing at oldtimers for including disclaimers on fic and then can't believe it when the oldtimers turn around and tell them The Epic Saga of Anne Rice's Lawyers.

So I don't know. Maybe I should see how much editing some of the longer things would need so I can post them with only moderate-to-crippling shame.

-

(Also, HEY, HEY I'M STILL HERE, HAI LJ. It's my fourteenth LJ anniversay on October 8th. Every year I say I should do something and every year I wake up in November and go "...ah shit, maybe next year.")

I'm afraid I've got terribly addicted to Pokemon Go, even though my Windows phone tried to protect me by being too rubbish to install it. Instead it's on my iPod which needs a wifi connection to play and, occasionally at weekends when I can borrow it, my mother's phone. So far I've resisted dropping £120 on a new phone JUST TO PLAY POKEMON GO. (I've still made it to level fifteen and caught 51 Pokemon. This either proves there's a flaw in the game's 'you must walk around to catch stuff' directive, or that where I work was incredibly foolish to install free unlimited wifi).

Today I finally saw a Pikachu silhouette when I was wandering around the local park. While walking around trying to find it, in an incredibly weird meta moment, a kid holding an actual oversized Pikachu plush ran past me.

It's possible I was hallucinating. I probably need to stop playing this game.

Roger just lost at Wimbledon so, in the traditions of the last twelve years, I'm sulking on LJ. Hurrah and yay and all that muchness.

(Roger, you had so many break points. You bloody sodding moron.)

Anyway, in addition to now getting entirely soused on Pimms because of idiot Swiss tennis players, I saw this on Twitter today about Russia's bugfuck crazy data laws affecting LJ and wondered sadly if it would be LJ's final straw. I mean, my flist is mostly a wasteland these days (not helped by my useless lack of posts) and I hang out mostly on Twitter (find me at @aomaakutu) but I don't want LJ to disappear entirely. It feels like it should stand forever as an archive to the early-ish days of fandom and online social networking and also, I have a lot of fic (all the old stuff of which is reposted over at Insanejournal, with apologies for how terrible it is) and nonsense and old conversations from over a decade of fandom sitting on here. I don't want that to disappear. AO3 is great and Twitter is great and tumblr is basically a disaster that hasn't got the sense to fall over under the weight of its own nonsense, and none of it does what LJ did. But if LJ does go, look me up on Twitter (@aomaakutu), or AO3 (clo) or Insanejournal (clofic) whatever. Maybe one day fandom will swing back around to blogging again. Then I can yell at people drunkenly about Roger being an idiot in more than 140 characters (which are nowhere near adequate to express my righteous indignation tbh).

Anyway! While LJ is still here and kicking, maybe I should actually use it for something? Idk, I hit a massive writer's block back in February and it took me forever to get over it so I started writing whatever got me writing anything again and it's left me with a bunch of weird WiPs, one of which is 30k and counting. As I'm a little drunk and a lot annoyed, how about some snippets of things that may, or may not, ever be finished? Why not? Snippets for everyone! (er, or everyone who likes tennis fic snippets since I have yet to find another fandom after twelve years. Never let it be said that I don't drag things out to the bitter end).



( tennis fic wips snippets )

I wonder if I'll ever forget LJ html. Weird.

Because I'm me, the next thing I really want to write isn't any of these but I only have it outlined rather than written and it's in that weird stage of being thought-perfect before I have to try and wrestle it into words. I like it though. If I can keep writing despite being back in work on Monday, it might even get snippeted, or maybe it'll just get posted. I don't think it'll be that. Except, I always say that and 50k later it's still half finished.

I can't believe Roger lost. What an idiot.

you and me (we are one and the same) - Tennis RPF, Andy Murray/Novak Djokovic, rated M. Vampire AU. 8,275 words.

“I am fine,” Novak says immediately, as if he isn't obviously being held upright by the wall alone, as if he doesn't look like he just got served up as dinner for a pack of wolves. His voice still rasps a little. “Andy, it is okay. I need just a moment and I will leave, it is not so bad as it looks.”

It takes a second for Andy to find his voice, a second more to breathe through the rising edge of panic he'd tried so hard to leave behind in Australia. “It looks pretty bad,” he says and has to pause to swallow when his tone pitches too far into shrill. “What the hell happened?”

Or, the one where Novak is a vampire and Andy should really know better by now.


---

Yes, I finished the vampire!Novak fic I started about five years ago because it's not as if I have plenty of other things to write right now. Oh wait, no. Scratch that. Reverse it.

Wow, LJ is running really slow for me right now; typing is taking a good five seconds or so to catch up. Unless those million updates Windows installed have done something which would be pretty annoying.

Life continues to be fair, y'all. Not won the lottery yet but soldiering on. About to embark on a serious Lie to Me marathon so, I'll let you know how that goes.