driseog | Recent Entries

It's been a hot minute since last i updated. I know nobody reads this but it's nice to post here and kind of document what's been happening.
let's list out what's been going on.
1. i went to my home country again! we were there for six weeks, I got to go pretty much everywhere i wanted to go and see everyone I wanted to see (which was a ton of people, I have a massive family). There was a wedding that brought a bunch of people over as well so it was like a family reunion, I got to see cousins I hadn't seen in years (thanks to the pandemic) and it was all in all an excellent experience. I did end up getting covid (a good chunk of relatives did too, including my mom), but it was super mild and i was fine after isolating.
2. I started my second year of college, I'm transferring to a different college after this semester so I'm just taking classes I'm interested in. I'm super excited for my ceramics class, it's a lot of work but it's so fun for me.
3. My aunt died, but my mom got to be with her in her last days and I went to my first funeral in a really long time. I'm not great with funerals, I find church services really hard and social events are tricky for me in general.
4. we've had some health issues in the family, minor on my part, major on others. I won't go into it but there was a scary few weeks for us.
5. I started driving! I'm getting help from an aunt of mine while I still have my permit. I'll have to get her a really good xmas gift for her as a thank you.

Also!
GOT/HotD has been rotting my brain lately. I'm obsessed with it. I'm already writing fix it fic for house of the dragon because my blorbos deserve happiness. It's really interesting and kind of fun to write the politics that are so intrinsic to the world.

Current Location: brainrot nation
Current Music: "run" - basia bulat

Hello! It's been a while since last I posted. I've been super busy as the semester is ending and finals are approaching. I'm just slogging through the days, trying to be as productive as I can. I've been struggling with math and art (there's a lot of time-consuming work for both, its been hard as hell). I've been working on my fic, trying to bend canon with my headcanon and what I want to make happen. It's been really fun though! I'm making pinterest pages for the main characters, maps with significant locations, spreadsheets with ages in different years. I've come up with new plot points, ways to incorporate characters. It's been quite a fun time.

my life kinda fell apart in the past few weeks. I got back from my first international trip in three years, got a cold, my dad got covid, and then proceeded to fall way behind in all my classes. its been really hard trying to dig myself out of this hole I've fallen into, but I guess that's just life? It's been shitty on my mental health too. But I have some good parts to everything,
1. I went to my family's home country! I got snacks for family there and brought stuff home.
2. Im making progress on my fic! Im doing more planning and outlining and trying to write the actual story part
3. My birthday is soon!

I'm making preparations for a ten-day trip. There's a lot to do, I have classes and work to deal with and packing. I fly out in a few days, and I have two classes that same day. It's very stressful but I hope to pull off the very busy next few days. In the next few days, I have an entire essay as well as a midterm I have to take, as well as work.
I'm super excited for the trip, it's to my mom and dad's home country (I was born in the US but I consider it my home country as well). We haven't been since summer of 2019, and it's been devastating for us not to be able to go back until now (I know that sounds privileged, but its where my dad's entire family and half my mom's family is and we're used to going back every year). I'm bringing back tons of American candy for relatives and I'll be returning with goodies for my friends and family stateside.
Let's hope I can stay on task and get shit done! Wish me luck!

I'm back in person for classes! it's been really great, it's amazing how much a bit of socialization can help (even for an introvert) even though it leaves me pretty tired after the fact. sometimes I come home and I can't handle basic interaction. I've sort of developed a routine for the week by now, which is actually kind of nice.

I've been getting some writing done, it's been a bit chaotic but I feel like I'm getting stuff done and accomplishing my general goals for the story. I hope to get more done tonight and tomorrow!

Ignore this if you like, it's a boring ol' life update.

this past week has been really great! I visited close family friends with my dad and we spent the day there, I haven't seen them in months and I'm very close with them all, they're as much family to me as my actual family. We played a bunch of board games and watched old game shows. I also started my in-person classes yesterday! Everything went without a hitch, I kept waiting for something to go wrong. Today was pretty great since I got to meet up with a friend for the first time since the start of the school year. They're the type of person that I could just talk to for hours, we can talk about nothing and have deep conversations and everything in between.

So, the college semester started at the end of January, but because of the panorama, we only went back to in-person classes this week. I'm still waiting on clearance to go on campus because of testing requirements and waiting for results. I've already missed my in-person classes for Monday and today. It's been so infuriating and stressful.

It's been a while since I updated my DW, so this post might get a bit long. I will certainly earn the tag "Brambles Rambles" this time. Lots of disjointed thoughts I want to talk about, just so I can get them out.
I've been finding some new music, I'm really enjoying Cosmo Sheldrake, his music has this wacky vibe, its fun and whimsical but there's this almost dark and nefarious vibe sometimes. I recommend his album The Much Much How How and I, you can find it on youtube and spotify.
I just wrote two essays in the span of about 12 hours, it was completely awful, I hated it, but at least they're done and turned in. Now I just have to worry about the MOUNTAIN of math I have to do now.
I've been writing less than I'd like to. Some of it's how busy I've been, some of it is just me. I have very little confidence in my actual skill as a writer; there's so much I want to write but I can't get it down without needing to immediately edit and rewrite it, it's very frustrating. I want to move forward but I can't, because I need to keep rewriting the same sentence. I've been trying to flesh stuff out in my notes in the meantime, examining characters and exploring their motivations. I'm actually using stuff I'm learning in my English class to do this! (My English prof is amazing, she also writes fanfiction)
My goal for the next few days is to really hunker down and catch up on schoolwork, as well as to get some writing done. I'm thinking I may try my hand at a oneshot or drabble, something to cleanse the palette from my main WIP.

Current Mood: stressed
Current Location: hell, michigan

I'm currently working on transcribing a notebook I kept with fanfiction ideas a few years ago. It's odd, looking back at the beginnings of ideas I'm still using, as well as things I've forgotten that I came up with.
Some of it is straight-up cringey, a lot of it is just unpolished and raw ideas I threw on the page, and a few ideas are actually pretty promising. I've actually been adding to it as I go along, shifting ideas and fleshing out stuff I brainstormed.
It's sort of fun to see what I was thinking. (Looking back I totally Mary-Sue-ified one of my favorite characters. Some of the stuff I imagined them being able to do is absolutely hog wild.)
It's also fascinating to see how much my handwriting changes from day to day, or from the start of a selection to the end. it always starts out so neat and pretty and then evolves to this awful chicken scratch. I interchange between cursive and print and there's some cursive in here that I can't make out at all.
I ended up getting so tired of typing that I started doing speech-to-text to transcribe some of it. It was a bit odd but went much faster. I'll likely do it again, so yay for assistive technology!

The weirdest part of this was looking at work from three to five years ago. I was in a completely different headspace, and I hadn't written much in terms of fanfic. I think (and hope!) I've improved a lot in my writing skills, and I keep coming up with more ideas and rewriting some of these bizarre writings that I'll likely never use, or only use as jumping-off points that I'll keep evolving.

Moral of the story? Keep your AWFUL old writing. It's absolutely amazing to see where you started and sometimes helpful to rediscover ideas.

For

snowflake_challenge #2, the prompt is to set goals for the coming year. I'm choosing to make them "fannish"

-I'd like to finish my current fic writing project, including editing and posting.
-I'd like to write more meta/analysis type stuff, there's all sorts of topics I have so many thoughts on that I feel others might be interested in and that others might enjoy reading about. I can think of at least three topics off the top of my head that I could easily write an entire academic essay about.
-I'd like to post two to three fanfictions this year, at least one being a longish fic and the others probably being oneshots.

Depending on my progress I may update this post with links to relevant accomplishments!

SPOILER WARNING FOR CALL THE MIDWIFE SERIES 11 AND ESPECIALLY EPISODE THREE

New Call the Midwife last night! I was so pumped for it, I feel like this series has been so good! I just wanted to put down a few thoughts about my reactions to the ep and the series as a whole.

I love series 11. It's been very nice to see the cast remain pretty much the same, I would have missed any of the characters if they left.
I've also LOVED seeing Nancy Corrigan, it's lovely to see an Irish nurse! It's been pretty interesting to see a nurse who has a bit of a darker backstory. We've never had an unwed mother in Nonnatus and I think it will be interesting to see how the nuns deal with having an unwed mother in their midst. I feel that they have always had a sense of moral superiority to their patients, so having someone like Nancy around sort of dismantles that notion. The nurses and nuns have always had "respectable" backgrounds and near perfect moral reputations. The only person who even comes close to defying that is Trixie and her struggles with alcoholism, but when that happened she was already a member of Nonnatus House and therefore had that protection. Nancy stands out. I hope the Nonnatuns continue to fight for her and help her, she deserves the chance to raise her daughter herself.

As for the episode itself, I was mostly struck by the plotline featuring Bernard, the "meths drinker" struggling with alcoholism. His interactions with Nancy were really interesting to see and I was just heartbroken to see how much he was suffering. The scene where Dr. Turner described the effects that drinking methylated spirits can have on the body was honestly horrifying. I didn't know what a meths drinker was until this episode, I had to google it. I think the scene where Nancy tried to help Bernard with his foot was maybe one of the most disgusting moments I'd seen on this show, and there had been quite a few. Bernard passing was sad, but I think it's a good balance between realism and a happy ending. He didn't have to die alone, he was cared for in his last moments. Nancy giving him her last name on his death certificate so he "belonged to someone" was such a good detail. I think this episode really showed that Nancy has a lot to learn but she has the foundational qualities it takes to be an exceptional nurse.

Hello! I'm doing the

snowflake_challenge on the recommendation of

ysabetwordsmith to introduce myself to dreamwidth!

Challenge #1 is to "In your own space, update your fandom information! Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so."

To start off, my favorite fandoms include;
-Marvel, mostly the MCU and a few odd comics (Young Avengers, Hawkeye)
-Call the Midwife (it's a relatively small fandom but it's been a favorite of mine for years)
-Harry Potter (fuck JKR, at this point my interest is more in what the fandom has made of harry potter than the actual source material.)
-There's plenty of other media I love but haven't engaged in the fandom of, as well as fandoms I haven't been an active part of in a while. I'm more of an observer rather than an engaged participant in a lot of fandoms if that makes sense.

Other things I love that aren't necessarily "fandom" interests;
-Crochet, sewing, embroidery, tablet weaving, and various other textile arts.
-History, mainly costume history, Irish history, history of the British monarchy, etc. (I'm actually a history major!)
-Music! Mostly folky music, artists like Johnny Flynn, the Oh Hellos, the Decemberists, the Lumineers, Mumford and Sons, etc. as well as Irish music of all sorts.

If you're interested in seeing my own works, you can find any fics I've written on AO3! Most of them are Bad (I wrote them when I was 13-17), but I can't bring myself to delete them, and I plan to post more eventually.

I feel so weird about the fact that the last time I posted fanfiction I was literally 17 (I'm 20 now, not much older but I feel like a different person, which I guess is pretty par for the course for that age). I haven't stopped writing, but looking on A03 and seeing a fanfiction I adore the concept for but abhor the writing of is weirdly hard.
Luckily I'm working on the rewrite now, technically I have been for YEARS (i keep planning and outlining but I can never get to the actual writing part). I'm at about 3500 words and I just have to fix the edits I made (I printed it, made the edits on paper, scanned it, and then I'll be fixing the actual document. complex but it works for me) and then I can keep writing. I feel like it might actually be kind of good this time? I'm sure when I'm 23 and looking at it I'll feel differently.
And now, back to the endless slog. Wish me luck, I suppose.

I have absolutely no idea why I'm only joining dreamwidth now, I've been part of fandom since I was like 13 and I was unaware what exactly dreamwidth was until like three days ago... I'm excited to explore!