ArgentNoelle

but not everything is miserable! I decided to rewatch the death note drama which i never finished, and got to episode 6 this time where it suddenly turned good after being kind of boring.... that was totally fun! i hope the rest of the series remains good, they did some fun twists and had a couple of great scenes in the last episode!

My long death note story is also finished, now I am working on editing it. i've edited part 1 and am in progress posting it, and have begun editing the first few chapters of part 2. then i got sick so... got stuck in the middle of a chapter with no ideas. but generally the editing is going pretty well and smoothly and fun. so that's great!!!

i really like hot cider in the autumn and we have been having so much of it with cinnamon and cloves and orange slices and it makes me feel happy!

with work i finished a book recently and it got published. not very much bought, but eh... :/ still! it's fun! the thing is supposedly you don't actually start making any money from books till you've got like 15 of them so I'm creeping toward that (i think I've got... five? but not all in the same genre so maybe it doesn't add up the same way idk) like getting. 3 dollars for a 20-dollar-priced book is so sad. i mean it's still cool but ahh. well, whatever...! stuff i am enjoying: my comic strip! i like doing it! it makes me happy!

future ideas: need to get back to doing taekwondo (sigh) because i pay by month because it's cheaper, but then it's so much easier to forget to do it and end up skipping the whole month for vaguely-defined reasons and blech... ALSO i have this graphic novel idea i want to make next year but we'll see...

p.s. i managed to finish the fic in time to post it on october 31 for L's birthday which was super awesome!!! :)

october is my favorite month of the year because it leads up to Halloween!!!!!

I've been rewatching the Harry Potter movies (bc even though JKR sucks the movies are still good) and am going to watch the final one this weekend. I also finished illustrating a book for work—finally! yay! and wrote the intro essay for it! AND I now only have *2 chapters* left of my excruciatingly long Death Note fic left, one half-written, the last chapter mostly just a pile of notes, and my goal is to get it done in time to be able to post the first chapter on the entire, completed fic by Halloween on L's birthday!!!! (there will still be lots of edits to do, I have like what 6 pages of just notes on edits I want to make but if I at least finish it I feel like I can happily post the first chapter even if I haven't completed the edits yet

It's been *ages*

I've been reading a lot of Snape/Lily recently [yeah it's literally my only Harry Potter OTP idk why I don't even ship in HP universe generally], most of which were fairly bad or out of character, but there were two fics that absolutely blew me away: one was A Dream Carved from Stone, by diadelphous the other is Come Once Again and Love Me by laventadorn. "A Dream Carved from Stone" had this lovely, soft, gorgeous and beautiful writing style, one of those fics that you just want to make last as long as you can because there's something so beautiful about it—like moonlight. In my bookmarks I described it: "BEST LILY/SEVERUS FIC EVER. BEAUTIFUL, GORGEOUS, BITTERSWEET AND LOVELY. HAPPY ENDING. ALSO my favorite Snape and Dumbledore fic by the by! gorgeous and interesting spy!Snape stuff and a really interesting Voldemort & Snape relationship too". (plus my absolute *favorite* take on dark vs light magic in HP!verse).

On the other hand, "Come Once Again and Love Me" was a total pageturner from the very beginning, and got so many characters spot-on: not only Snape and Lily but also an incredible Remus, a really awesome Dumbledore (though he doesn't appear in it much) and best of all my favorite take EVER on Eileen, nothing else can ever compare after that, it is my new headcanon for her. That story took some tropes I'm usually iffy on and made me love them, as well as telling a really lovely tale on second chances and how people have both good and bad in them in a way that ended on a really remarkably hopeful note. Both totally different stories but also totally good.

I have also been keeping up on Dracula Daily! I can't believe it is almost over again! :)

It actually held together far more than I thought it would, seeing as you never get answers to the whole plot—but that’s not really what this version is about. It’s about Mark starting out in this place of apathy and grief and depression and slowly coming to ask questions about what he’s doing with his life and facing the stuff he’s been trying to hide away all this time. And it ends up feeling far more complete and hopeful of a story than the original cut I think.

Because the taping together Gemma’s picture is no longer a twist, it hits far more emotionally/sweetly too—in the original, there’s definite plot reasons for not having seen her face until the reveal. In this cut, instead it feels very symbolic. Like, Mark’s been saying he’s dealing with his grief but he’s not, he’s hiding it away—in himself when he goes to work, in how he can’t face it—the imagery of Petey’s phone that he hides away in the box, just like all of Gemma’s stuff is packed away in his basement, but the phone keeps calling him (another far more obvious parallel there too with Mrs. Selvig’s weird basement)—the way Mark’s feeling of responsibility for Petey’s death ends up bringing him into an active role in the story of trying to begin to ask questions—and it culminates in him ripping up that picture of Gemma, and then suddenly realizing that’s not what he wants to do, and taping it back together, and then you see her face and *he* sees her face for the first time in the show, it’s like that amorphous grief he’s running from which was so overpowering it even covered the memory of her has suddenly been pulled aside enough for him to remember the details, who she was as a person, and the love he had for her. And so after that when he decides to quit Lumon, as a character arc, it felt really complete. Like, that’s the central plot of this section.

Plus I just liked how much focus this cut put on the Mark & Devon interactions (Devon is one of my favorite characters) and the slightly different view you got on the Mark & Mrs. Selvig (her loneliness and her obsession with Mark on a far more personal level), and even how much Eleanor’s birth becomes a part of the plot? And how symbolically it’s just part of how things start opening up. Like, the first half of the cut was slow and boring and excruciatingly sad, and then to see Mark start to live again in small ways felt so incredible in a way that it just doesn’t come through in the original cut. The relationship between him and Alexa was also much cuter in this cut as well, since there wasn’t so much overshadowing it. And the scene in the alley where they watch June’s band also felt like such a breath of fresh air, partially because it’s like the first time Mark has actually decided to do something, just because he wants to, instead of just being dragged through life. It felt really vibrant and beautiful.

I also loved the conceit of having a completely normal story set in a wacky sci-fi setting where the sci-fi stuff is only vaguely alluded to and never actually touched on. It’s like “we live in evil-company-that-splits-people’s-brains universe! here’s a story about a man coming to terms with his grief after the loss of his wife.”

bc i saw what Kyo said about it being kind of like Yotsuba arc which piqued my interest, then I checked the synopsis on wikipedia & I was like: ooh! sci-fi brain stuff, sounds fun!

I'm about halfway through it (just finished the episode where they found the goats)

misc. thoughts:

Lumen — what's its deal? oil? (that black goo) medical stuff/experimentation/drugs? (killing the goats for something?) the break room — they all hear something different — maybe what they're subconsciously running from/afraid of?

Each of the main characters is like a different type as to where they find meaning — the type that believes in a higher purpose, the type that wants experiences/physical stuff along the way, the type that is kind of like what's the point/disassociated/I just do it, the type that's like no I don't like any of it I'd rather die

Visuals are super cool and eerie. Very SPN!heaven vibes. Also The Prisoner vibes a bit, which is fun :) I feel like Helley and Number 6 have a similar kind of spirit in them. Of course it is also No Exit

What's up with that chip in their heads? I think it does more than just split their brains — maybe it gives them subconscious perceptual number-powers so they can do their trashing-data jobs. Maybe that's actually the point, and the brain splitting is just how they're covering it up.

Totally guessed that the break room was torture before they showed it, but it definitely could've been worse/more horrifying in there. Nicely done though.

I'm not sure if Helley's like... a double agent or something maybe? Who got herself in there to figure out what was going on? And that's why she won't let herself leave? Either that or they're gonna do something with that her inner-version is good and sort of admirable, but her outer-version really is just horrible and amoral and what does that say about their relationships with personhood

Kind of like Mark's inside-version better, he's a lot more brave (though I do like outside-Mark's relationship with his sister, that's sweet. Plus he just told her that secret that he thinks Lumen's up to something — maybe they will team up to do some exploring!)

They probably couldn't get permission to use Enter Sandman so that's why they used a cover for the funeral scene, but I think they did a good job/nice choice to make it be a "bad" version that the daughter sang.

That lady with the silver hair is so creepy. Also I am sure I have seen that actress before in something but I have refrained from googling so I don't get spoilers.

The romance between Irving(?) and that other guy is so sweet! I did not expect that. Actually Irving annoyed me at first but I ended up kind of invested in him since he's actually doing something, now the short guy is the only person who doesn't have a mission of some sort, though he is reading the book

Interesting metaphorical thing/point with that book being kind of dumb but inside Lumen it's enough to spark things and give them courage, just by saying anything at all and giving them alternatives to the "official narrative."

Basement floor — endless maze — very like the minotaur's labyrinth. I wonder what's in the center of it? Or are they?

I think each character ended up here/put themselves here because of something they're afraid of facing, maybe something in their past or something they did.

Why does no one else live in the apartment complex? Why does the grey haired lady spy on Mark? Is he that important to things, or does she have some kind of personal investment in the matter? Does she have secrets of her own? I think she does...

Irving's goo visions are maybe his subconscious beginning to more consciously interpret what they're doing with the data/what Lumen's doing? Will he eventually see or know a secret through that?

I just got opentoonz and wanted to try out a little animation. It’s looking pretty good so far! but I couldn’t figure out how to connect it to ffmpeg so it could export in the right format so I just exported it as a bunch of stills and then put them all in ezgif….. I really need to figure out how to fix that before I do something longer

I haven't messed around with animation for a couple of years and I used to use pencil.app but I wanted to branch out... also it stopped working on my computer :/ but this software is pretty easy to use too if you google some tutorials. except for the exporting bit. i'm not sure how i'm even going to fix it because i am... so baffled. what do I download? why is import/export settings not showing up for me?
many questions.

that was fun :) we won't get to finish it till sunday though...

Other news: work stuff is going on; two articles I wrote came out (yay!) & one is impressive [although kind of boring]. The other one I really like :) I have mostly so far managed to stick to my plan & have been consequently feeling actually somewhat better! <3 also so many emails... I hate emails...

[except for Dracula Daily. I did that this year on tumblr & it was so fun. I've read Dracula like 3 times(?) before that but it was even better with the book club]

this far-too-long fanfic I'm writing is slowly creeping its way toward being finished. Now that Nanowrimo is over it's harder to get the motivation to write every day, but I'm doing it little by little... I had real trouble with one specific chapter that I had to write and then edit and change the direction on three separate times because I wasn't happy with where it was going; it's an important bit/turning point so it needed a lot of extra thought. But now that bit is over and the next part fingers crossed will be a little easier—also I'm super excited for the next arc (which is the last or the second-to-last one in the story, depending on how I count it).

that i've never done before. I know some html, don't really know css but can make it do stuff for me, but for the first time I messed around in terminal & managed to find file directories and make it list out files that I have. I know, it's super basic lol :) but it was cool to see stuff happen when I typed! ah, not even list files in directories, I also got it to tell me when the files were created. Awesome.
Let's see if I can remember what the commands were:

cd [finding certain folders through paths]
ls [list]
ls -l [that's an L] [for showing the date created etc]
yay!

also figured out a small little issue that was confusing me for a bit. For a while I was having trouble where the path wasn't working, say

/folder1/folder2/folder 3

it was like "never heard of that place."

Then I managed to google & find out that, of course, it was getting all tripped up by the space. Of course! why would it think those were the same thing? I know it because I know what I named my folders but the computer doesn't. A folder with a space in the name has to be written like this:

/folder 1/folder2/"folder 3"

kind of self-evident. But also. cool! I figured it out :)

I bought a christmas present for someone... I'm super excited, I think it will be fun :)

[gonna try out some pottery-fixing with silver]

my story isn't finished yet, but 50,000 words in November and I got this beautiful picture :)