kungfuwaynewho | What Have I Been Up To in the Last Two Months?

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What Have I Been Up To in the Last Two Months?

In my last LJ post, I said I had started a new screenplay but it wouldn't be done in time for anything. And that was true - I haven't written a single page since then, actually. It's dead in the water at 30 or so pages; I'll have to sit down, actually write a fucking outline, and think about it.

But I did write a completely new, different screenplay! I started like May 3, finished like May 30, just in time to submit to Austin Film Festival. It was a comedy - I've never written a comedy before. I didn't have an outline, a synopsis, even a log-line. I just sat down one day and started writing. On the whole, even if it's not the best thing I've ever written (and it's definitely not), it was just such a fun experience for a change, to have an idea and just go with it. And it was heartening that I knew how to write a movie without having to actually write out all the technical framework first. So quite fun.

Community was canceled. I started watching in the beginning of S2, so I missed that first "will it be canceled or renewed?" crisis, but every season after that, I lived it. S2, S3, S4, each time I was sure this was it, it was finished. And then it would get renewed! This year was the first time that I had been confident in renewal - the numbers were good, Sean Saves the World and The MJF Show tanked, #sixseasonsandamovie, etc. I wasn't even worried! And then. And then... So yeah, that was pretty devastating. For the next two weeks, I would remember "Community got canceled" at the most random times and would literally get sad.

More work on the basement. Closets framed in, sump pump framed in, a couple more walls. We found a desk someone had put out for trash that just needs one drawer to be fixed up, new hardware, and a fresh coat of paint, so that's sitting in our basement waiting for my next big Project Day.

We also put in a garden! It's doing really well so far, though I think we haven't harvested anything yet. But having a yard feels more legit when there's a garden in it.

Community was renewed! So I read the news, then I texted my friend, "YAHOO has picked up Community. YAHOO. Is this real? It this a thing that is happening? YAHOO." Seriously, I had to read like three articles before I was convinced it was real and wasn't a prank or something. I'm very excited, obviously, and glad to hear the budget will be the same; after my initial swoon of joy, I worried it would be all cheap and low-rent and such. I know a lot of people have been disappointed with the show's last couple seasons (I mean, seriously, S4 was not good at all, really), but I wasn't ready for it to be over, and S5 was such a comeback, and like. I'm happy. :D

Worked a lot on The Orphan Queen. I'm over 200,000 words now, and a lot of the random little details I stuck in here and there are finally paying off, which is so satisfying. I guess you could say I do the George R.R. Martin style of writing when it comes to this novel, in that I plant a lot of things to sort of see what happens later on, knowing the rough end goal but not having a strict outline as such beyond that. So when disparate threads come together, there's this wonderful click that just can't be recreated. (Of course, that also means I sometimes go back and weed out things that didn't pan out, like some random love triangle-ish subplot runner that went nowhere. But even that can be fun!) It's turned into such a monstrously long novel, I just write and write and write and I make progress, of course, but the idea of ever finishing it seems very unattainable.

Someone plagiarized a wallpaper of mine. That means I've made it in fandom, right? They apologized and took their posts down, which is the best-case scenario, I guess, but it was still pretty frustrating, especially since I think they still don't quite understand why I was upset over the whole thing. (Sadly, my overall reaction to the whole thing was being kind of sad that I don't really do graphics anymore. I need to get back into that thing, even if it's just random icons here and there.)

I also had a falling out with some friends, but that kind of thing warrants a post of its own, I think, so suffice it to say I haven't been as social as usual. I'm okay with how things have ultimately turned out, but that doesn't mean I'm sad when I think, "oh, normally I would ask so-and-so to come over, but that's not happening now, welp." Such is life.

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Congratulations on your screenplay, that's excellent! And I'm glad your novel is going well.

I too am thrilled that Community was saved! I only got into it this summer, after it was canceled, so I guess I don't know the true pain of longtime Community fans. But I love it SO much and I was so sad that there wouldn't be any more after I finished it. So I'm really pleased that it will be back! The 4th season did suck, but the 5th season was just as good as earlier seasons, I think. Can't wait for the 6th season!

I feel like there are different cancellation pains, and we feel them all at one time or another. I came to Firefly long after it had been canceled, knowing that was that, and it's a very different but still specific pain watching something, falling in love with it, already knowing it's finite. I never like when fans institute hierarchies within fandom, you know?

I read this one article that was a little tongue-in-cheek, like, "Community fans get their last-minute save, immediately begin complaining about something else," and it's SO true. I'm just like, man, I hope they do more than 13 episodes!

That's true, there's definitely a specific pain to knowing that the thing you love has a definite end. I was so sad when I was on S5 of Community! I hope they do more than 13 episodes too! Maybe if it gets a really good response...

Wow, good job on The Orphan Queen! That's a lot of words.

Thanks! I might be at the halfway point? Thereabouts, at any rate. It's terrible. No one will ever publish it, but I'm writing it for me, so oh well. :D

Good job on the finished screenplay, and it sounds as if you're coming along nicely with The Orphan Queen, that's great! And maybe you'll need another 200k words to wrap everything up, which will be okay. You can always publish it in installments. I remember The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist; it was published (at least in Europe) in one go, but it was a number of smaller books in a box set rather than one big Infinite Jest type of novel. I liked that idea.

Yeah, there are going to be three parts, and I think each part would work as a standalone novel, if needs must. I read some books a few years ago that had been published as two books in Great Britain, but were split and published as four books in America. So it happens.

When it's all done, just listen to what your story tells you. You'll know how it needs to be published once it's finished, I'm sure.

I don't even like to think ahead that far, to be honest. Mostly because I'm worrying about the writing, and worrying about something that will likely be almost completely out of my control seems a distraction, honestly.

Exactly; such things can wait until the writing process is done.

Yay, you're back! And WORDS, omg words. ♥

The only reason I checked how many words I had was for this post; I don't even look at that anymore, heh.

Sometimes it's just nice to know. ;)

Congrats on the screenplay :)

And yaye for getting more work done on the house!

I think I have to rewatch all of Community at one point, because I feel like I'm the only person who didn't think season 4 sucked. But maybe I was just a bit annoyed by those gasleak jokes in season 5, that was just a bit too much for me.

Your progress on Orphan Queen sounds fantastic! And I'm always a big fan of details from the beginning that pay off in the end. As a reader it makes you feel super smart in a way when you remember the detail from before.

I just started my rewatch of Community yesterday! I had wanted to do it this summer, and then the cancellation news bummed me out; one of the first things I thought of after the renewal was, "I can rewatch Community now!"

There were a few episodes in S4 I thought were good, and plenty of laughs still, but I think I was getting them more from the cast than the writing. Having Dan Harmon gone really did make a difference for me. But S4 wasn't the absolute terrible dreck some people made it out to be, for sure. It was just okay, instead of the best. ;)

I'm always so hesitant with rewatches, because so many other things I have to watch for the first timexD Currently sort of binging Orange is the new black^^

I guess since an okay season was still better then lots of other stuff out there I guess I was totally fine with it^^

I KNOW! I want to rewatch a bunch of stuff, but I have so many shows I'm in the middle of, and so many I haven't even started yet, and it's like, where will I ever have enough time?!

Yes it's one problem that sometimes really bothers me but damn it's such a first world problem that I never bring it up anywhere because it's so ridiculous.

Congrats on all the writing! It sucks to have to shelve projects, but it seems like you redirected the energy to other work, and that it paid off.

I was totally all about the Community renewal drama too; first Hulu was involved, then they passed, and I never would have imagined Yahoo! as a viable carrier. Still, it sounds like everyone is still involved, and I didn't know about the budget being the same, but that's awesome.

Oh, and I'm well into S3 of Fringe, btw. Soooo good.

Yeah, when I hadn't heard anything, I assumed Hulu hadn't been interested and that was pretty much that, since Sony and Netflix have been unmixy things for awhile and it was doubtful an actual network would pick it up. Talk about a major surprise.

Fringe! I...need to finish Fringe.

Yay, congrats on all the writing! I feel like there's something to be said for just plowing ahead sometimes.

Incidents like your plagiarism make me seriously twitchy about ever posting any art online ever. :/

Sorry about the falling out w/friends. That seriously sucks. A ton.

Cath says you're probably not going to be able to make it to the wedding, but if you do, it would be too cool to meet you!

Also, a friend's husband suddenly can't make it, so I'd have to check w/the others but I imagine you could totes share a hotel room with the bridesmaids.

I just sent Catherine my regrets, unfortunately. Sharing a room would help, but not quite enough to make it viable. (Plus, I'm not sure how comfortable I would be sharing a room with strangers, y'know.) I'm pretty bummed, but maybe next year travel will be a possibility.

The plagiarism thing was so random - someone commented on the more-than-a-year-old LJ post where I had first put up the wallpaper to let me know about it; someone had taken a wallpaper and used it in the background of some graphics of theirs on tumblr. I commented, and they were adamant that they didn't mean to take credit for my work, it was all a mistake. Which, like, I get that it's difficult to own up to something like that - "yes, I totally yoinked your work because it was easier than making my own background and I didn't think anyone would notice - but sheesh. Ultimately, though, it's just fanart. So I'm not too worried about it, y'know? Original art? Yeah, I wouldn't chance it unless you went to the trouble to do a CC on everything, etc.

Man, the falling out thing. It was the strangest thing. We've been pretty good friends for quite a few years now, to the extent that we were invited over for Thanksgiving, exchanged decent-sized Christmas presents, hung out a lot; fairly close. Well, my little sister had a fight with our parents over a dating situation, and she contacted these friends - whom she's also friends with, they did a lot of concerts together the last couple years. And the friends decided to drive over, pick little sis up, let her stay with them.

Which, like, I guess is well-intentioned? But they didn't contact us, didn't really know what was going on, just took it upon themselves to swoop in and be the white knights. And I know my parents, and how they react to things. We had been over to talk to little sis, she was upset, mom and dad were upset, but there was no reason she couldn't stay there that night. We had explicitly told her she couldn't come to our house because she does that when she throws tantrums; she just refuses to engage and leaves, and we told her that she has to actually talk to our parents, deal with them, be an adult. She can't just stomp off when she doesn't get her way.

Anyway, we found out about the friends going to pick her up - and at the time, what little sis was saying was that they were offering her a place to move out of the house to. Later this was amended to "only for that night," but I'm not sure about that. I really do think they offered to let her move out of mom and dad's and in with them. So I called and asked them to just leave everything alone. She's fine where she is, we appreciate the gesture (not really, but I was trying to be nice and smooth things over), but let it go. And I had to argue with them for like 20 minutes over it. Early on, one of the friends claimed her cell phone was on the fritz, and I was like, "I'm not sure I believe that," which ended up feeling accurate as never once in the phone call did she ask me to repeat myself or did I hear anything weird. Apparently she took HUGE offense to that, claimed I was calling her a liar. The other friend took offense that we asked her not to intervene in the first place.

So yeah, I haven't spoken to them since. My sister Laura spent a week trying to call and message them, no one would answer or message back. When they finally did, it was like, we were just trying to help, we did nothing wrong, Shannon called us a liar, she should apologize, etc. And Laura was basically like, whatever. Not choosing sides against my own sister. So that's been that. It's been almost six weeks now, and I doubt anything will change. I, at least, have no desire to hang out with them anymore, not necessarily because of the initial incident, but because of the way they froze Laura out when she was trying to patch things up.

Woof, sorry, didn't mean to go into it that in depth, but yeah. Like, it's such a weird situation. I'm pretty bad about washing my hands of a friendship when the other person does something to lose my trust or does something really, really uncool, but this didn't feel like that kind of a situation. I was just going to let things cool off and then see what happened. But it seems they don't want anything to do with me anymore, and, well. What are you going to do after that?

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What Have I Been Up To in the Last Two Months?

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