Back from Melbourne! This marks the first time I've been on the Internet since Wednesday afternoon, despite there being a pay-per-use computer right down the hall from us at the hotel. And yet I have not experienced the slighest bit of web withdrawl. This should tell you all you need to know about how busy the last couple of days have been. x_x

The best way I can describe Manifest is that it felt like a medium-sized con that got scaled up to a very large con without anyone making most of the organisational changes required to make this go smoothly. The venue for the ball was so small and full of so many people that there was next to no room left for anyone to dance or take photos without being in everyone else's way. The non-preregistered queue for the con took hours to get through on the first day and only got longer on the second, and the hall for the cosplay comp is so far from being large enough that apparently a lot of people have to be shuffled into secondary halls to watch via a video feed. Traders were apparently moved this year because there wasn't space for them in the main building, which meant there was quite a walk to get there, and even the new venue quickly wound up so packed the queue to get in sometimes went all the way down the stairs. Also, there were no maps to show where everything was, no programs available on the first day, and the art show turned out to be an empty room. So in short, I'd say I we get better value out of our local Waicon most years, but the people were really friendly and like just about any event that lets us get dressed up and hang out with friends and other fans, a lot of fun was had.

Many photos were taken (velithya's got nice one of me and her up here), but most of them are still on pinneagig's camera and she isn't back until Tuesday. So I'll leave this as a preliminary con report for now and go get some much needed rest.

It occurs to me it's way past time I said something up here about my plans for the next month, given how crazy, epic and generally incompatible with a good eight hours sleep per night they're looking from this angle. The short version is that I am going to be leaving for a few days in Melbourne tomorrow, coming home then heading to Japan a week later, with the rollerskating national champs squeezed in the middle. Yeah, somehow all this seemed like a good idea. (I would blame this on a whole lot of wonderfully crazy friends who kept making awesome-sounding plans, and I'm bound to regret it somewhere in the middle, but hopefully not that much if it's half as much fun as it ought to be~)

( Plans also include Manifest, the Tokyo Gameshow, and a lot of cosplay )

Challenge-fic, written for theme set Epsilon from the 1sentenceorder. Fifty sentences, each based on a one-word theme - some silly, some serious, a few quite distinctly smutty; spread all over the GG timeline, generally unconnected and as likely as not to contradict each other. As long as it fits the theme, pretty much anything goes here. aphelion_orion gets credit for (accidentally) putting me on to the challenge and egging me on, thanks also to velithya for betaing.

Pairing: Sol/Ky
Rating:: R
Word Count: 3600
Warnings: As noted above, a fair few are of the mildly-to-seriously smutty persuasion. Those of you who've been around a while may notice this makes this about the first time I've seriously attempted to write anything which needed an R rating for that reason, so uh, yeah. Be warned for that too.
Also be warned for semi-colon abuse, excessive hyphenation and other cheap tactics to compress what should really be several sentences down into one. Part of the reason I tried out this challenge was that I thought it would be a good way to practice getting something across in one sentence without getting overly wordy or trying to cram too much in. The irony is not lost on me.

( Other notes )

( 50 Sentences )

Just when I was thinking I must surely be past my quota for being sick this winter... ( you can all see where this sentence has to be going, right? )

In conclusion: so not going in to work on Monday. Also, anyone who's been around me in the last week or so (god, I almost feel guilty going to that thing at alyssea's place on Thursday night now, knowing how fast it went around work) now might not be a bad time to take some extra vitamin C pills. >_<

Two completely unrelated shows that I happened to catch up on recently: (spoilers, obviously)

( Avatar )

( Doctor Who )

General question for the GG side of the f-list, is anyone still planning anything for the Hope/Free doujinshi project that was being talked about earlier this year? It's been a good while since there's been any news on it, including news from my own end - but I'm working on that.

Remember this crack doujinshi idea I posted about way back in February? After leaving it pushed to the back of my mind for the last five months solid, it finally got brought up again in a chat conversation, mulled over for a day or so and then hammered out into a 12 page doujinshi script pretty much all in one stretch. This chewed up just about all fic writing time I had planned for that week, but I still get to feel productive over this one. ^_^ (Damn, but it's nice having Ghost Stories done so I can finally work on other stuff without that nagging sense of guilt again.)

Better still, an artist from our manga club (one responsible for art like this, for referece) sounds keen on drawing it up for me. We probably won't be able to get started on it properly any time too soon, since official club doujinshi projects take priority right now, but it's still sounding very promising. But she has also raised the very fair question about what we're going to do with it once it's done, hence the question that started this post.

( Less important stuff about Japanese fanart sites to follow )

(Ganked from aphelion_orion.) I don't often make whole posts just to plug cool stuff from out on the web, but these were worth making an exception for. These are fan-made videos at their mind-blowing best.

Dead Fantasy I
Dead Fantasy II

People Who Should Click These Links:
1. Anyone who has ever played any game in the Dead or Alive or Final Fantasy series.
2. Anyone with a particular love for the female cast of either series.
3. Anyone who did not like the female cast and felt disappointed that so many of the FF girls do not live up to their full potential for awesomeness.
4. Anyone who likes massive, beautifully scripted team vs team battle sequences. Including anyone who does not yet know how much they like massive, beautifully scripted team vs team battle sequences.
5. Anyone who got bored during the neverending fight scenes of Advent Children, and/or seriously fed up with the failure of the fight choreographers to figure out how to work magic into a hand-to-hand battle. (Dear Squeenix: THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT RIGHT.)
6. You.

Right, I've had a bit of a break, time to start thinking about editing the final version of The Telling of One Billion Ghost Stories into some kind of shape.

I still want to post the finished copy in chapters, as 90,000 words is far too much to tackle in one go, but it'll need to be compressed down to fewer installments or I'll be posting this thing just about forever. So far, the plan is to try for chapters around twice as long as most of the draft ones (4000 words or so, allowing for where scene breaks will work), posting twice a week but probably only plugging them from the comms every couple of chapters because otherwise the spam is going to get epic. If I keep that up, it's still going to take me around least ten weeks to get it all posted. Obviously, both I and whoever's betaing will need a serious head start to keep up that kind of pace, so I'd better make sure I'm a good way through with the editing before I start posting at all. The way my schedule looks right now, if this is all done by the end of the year, I should probably count it as a big success. I am also going to friends lock all the entries for the draft version once I start posting the finished one, since I'm not keen on the idea of having both versions out there on the web at once.

I'm of two minds about how much work to go to in the editing stage. The first version goes, "Hey, look how many people loved this story and/or told you it was too good to be a draft already! Just run a proper spell check and call it done!" The second goes, "This is the longest, most serious project you have ever embarked upon, and it does not deserve to be done by halves. You should be editing this thing to within an inch of its life." It's probably in everyone's best interests if I lean heavily towards option B there.

( The editing to-do list so far - cut to shorten this post down a bit )

Now is the part where I ask people to help me add to that list. The support in the feedback on the draft made all the difference at keeping me going, but it's time to put on the concrit goggles and let me know what if anything didn't work so well. Were there any particular scenes that felt off? Any aspects that didn't keep consistent all the way through the story? Any parts that needed fleshing out more, or that dragged on too much? Were there any bad habits or awkward turns of phrase that started grating on your nerves after showing up too many times? If there's anyone reading this who read part way through the story but lost interest at some point, what was it that turned you off? Did the focus shift too much away from Doumeki and Watanuki and on to the other characters in the last section? Was there too much talking and not enough action at the end? Whatever you might've thought needed polishing up, let me know, I'd be keen to get some discussion going on this. What I don't want to do is make anyone feel obligated to read back through the whole thing to find every little spelling error - general impressions are much more use to me at this stage, and whatever you can pull from memory is fine.

If anyone wants to volunteer their services as a beta reader, that'd be great too. Considering the scale of this story, having a couple of different perspectives would be a big help.

Title: Quod Erat Demonstrandum
Summary: Ponder attempts to teach a few things to Young Sam. No cows were harmed, or more than temporarily displaced, in the writing of this fic.
Rating: G
Word Count: 3760
Warnings: Gratuitous footnotes, bastardisation of Roundworld physics in a Discworld setting, will make very little sense to anyone who hasn't read Thud.
Other notes: Title and concept from a very inspired prompt which I have factorielle to thank for and also apologise to profusely for taking so unforgivably long to finish this. Thanks also to tevriel for betaing.

( Arguing with Young Sam on whether or not cows went moo would be tantamount to suicide for an authority figure. )

Home sick again today, so what do I do? I make icons. This is almost becoming something of a tradition. But I needed a happydance! icon, and not even all my issues with Overture combined could make caramelldansen!Sin any less completely, utterly adorable. (His little coat is so swishy! It's even in character! Just makes me want to hug him and squish him and ask his dad why he ever thought it was a good idea to call him Sin.)

( Couple more under the cut )