All art is at once surface and symbol

Here's a list of all my unfinished fanfiction and plot bunnies! Bear in mind that if a story has a title, it's definitely not its final one. I'm just naming them based off what their filenames are called.

( Without further ado, the list from hell. )

Whee! I love alliteration. Anyway, I should've done this a few days ago, but I'm finally gonna list my plans for the Pokemon Rare Pair challenge!

( Mwoiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing~! )

Around six in the morning, I got past the Magma Pool guard and painted one of my Neopets "Magma." Yay! :D

I've been wanting to type about this for some time... months even. But either I was shy or distracted and IRL's gotten in the way a lot too. More noveltalk, this time centering on one of our main characters.

The novel takes place in a fantasy world where toys come to life. Our two leads are a Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy doll, and well... their experiences aren't quite as syrupy and adorable as that of their predecessors. Namely our primary antagonist, a nutcracker surgeon named Dr. Medlock, wanted to kidnap both of them for experimentation and was only successful in capturing Ann, leaving Andy as a fugitive trying to rescue his sister and avoid getting caught. While Ann deals with the secrets and horrors of Dr. Medlock's lab, Andy is pursued by a mysterious illusionist and his abominable creatures and magic.

Now here's the thing... Raggedy Andy is gay.

Obviously, I'm not talking about Johnny Gruelle's original Raggedy Andy. Novel!Andy, on the other hand, eventually falls in love... with another boy. Nothing's offscreen either. Hugging, kissing, the whole gamut. I've been trying to think about what this means in a world of Living Toys.

"BUT PURI, TOYS CAN'T FEEL SEXUAL ATTRACTION!111!1 THIS IS WEIRD!!1!111"

Didn't stop Woody & Bo, Buzz & Jessie and the Potato Heads in the "Toy Story" trilogy from falling in love, did it? 'Sides, it's my book, my world, my universe. I make the rules around here. Comments like this will be torpedoed and I don't appreciate them. That said, if you're not too wigged out by this, let's go on.

( What do you do when one of your main protagonists is gay? Small paragraph of toysex, worldbuilding, and Puri disliking LGBTQ cliches. )

What do you guys think? How would toys view homosexuality?

Lately I've been doing two things: A. Sleeping. B. Thinking too hard about things. The Writer's Block is going as strong as ever and it's really disheartening. Really Puri. Just pick one scene you've always wanted to write that's important to the novel. Even if it's Raggedy Andy and Marius bonking each other senseless. Then I think, "Oh, you're just writing sex" and feel terrible. I'm constantly beating myself up and feeling like nobody is developed enough or my plot points aren't mature enough (despite the fact you never know for sure if it's all kept in your head instead of oh, physically writing it down but augh. The torment continues) and I just continue to feel guilty for not being as organized as a supercomputer.

So... I guess this is an "Ask Me About My Novel" post. Just so I can know what questions people are actually curious about and not feel like I'm babbling about some kind of pointless imaginary world that seems to affect only me and no one else.

And I'm worried about my relationship with my boyfriend. Baaaaws.

Ask me a question about writing. It can be absolutely anything (writing process, favorite things to write, characters I've created, etc.) and I will tell you the honest-to-god answer. Don’t hold back. Whatever you ask, I will try my best to answer. You may ask as many questions as you want.

Hey guys! Wanna know how infamously glitchy Sonic 2006 is? Here ya go!



I've been watching the LP of Sonic 2006 to pass the time when Jean wasn't reading Homestuck with me, and lately, I've been getting a strange sense of nostalgia from my time in Sonic fandom. Hell, after I talked to Sipp on Plurk, I felt inspired to make an RP account for E-102 Gamma from Sonic Adventure 1, and did it. I'll refine it and make icons for him later after I replay the game. Just... wow. I used to love Gamma. :o And I totally shipped him with Amy. I still do.

Aside from Pokemon, Sonic the Hedgehog fandom had a lot of "firsts" for me. My first serious crush on a fictional character (Shadow the Hedgehog, which I felt a lot of guilt for, mostly because I was scared of being a "rabid fangirl" and that I was gonna be labeled as a "furry", though I eventually stopped caring about the latter. :P Former, on the other hand... hoo boy), the first time I started receiving attention for my work in fandom (not BNF-status, but I've had a couple strangers who went up to me and said, "Hey, aren't you the one who wrote that one fic/that Sonadow essay at ship_manifesto?" and gave me warm, fuzzy feelings inside. Usually those fans and I became friends. ;;), and hell, even the first time I wrote smut... a looooooooong story which deserves its own entry. :P Gods, the first AMV I ever made was a Shadow the Hedgehog AMV using "Bliss" by Tori Amos. I think I lost it and never recovered it, which is kind of a shame, but then again, I made a couple other old Sonic AMVs too, haha. XD

It's kind of painful for me to look back on my years in Sonic fandom since I went from being a cheerful fangirl who did what she loved to being a paranoid worrywart who was concerned what people and older fans thought of her because she loved Shadow and Sonadow and felt "ostracized" because she enjoyed playing the newer (at the time) games as well as the classics. When I look back on them now, Sonic Heroes and the games after them are crappy. Yet even knowing games like Shadow the Hedgehog are horrendously and painfully cheesy and has all these flaws and tries way too hard to be hardcore ("Where's that DAMN 4th Chaos Emerald!? DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN WATCH ME SAY DAMN."), I get a sense of guilty pleasure from them due to the time I spent with friends in fandom. Under normal circumstances, I would've found a character like Silver stupid and annoying, and today I really wish he didn't have to be another hedgehog, but... ngggh. Fucking Narm Charm. gjdskgjdksg

My heart will always belong to Sonic Adventure 2 and the earlier games like Sonic CD and S3&K though. Fuck yes.

I don't get me started how much I whined about Sonic elitists. It's like I spent the last part of my active years of Sonic fandom feeling "persecuted" and miserable, and it shows in the last few Sonadow fics I written. To the point I think my friends were calling me out for it. When I think about it, the more I want to strangle my past self. I was so concerned with being a "good" Shadow and Sonadow fan, even in the eyes of people who didn't like them, and... gdhskjghdkjsgh. I even gotten into fights with a couple friends about this, and lost one of them because of it. I spent too much time worrying about what other people thought. You can see why this was painful for me to think about. I feel like Karkat from Homestuck with his self-loathing and how much he detests his past self for being so moronic, 'cause I'm feeling exactly the same way when I look at myself in my late years of Sonic fandom.

As my Sonic obsession waned into hiatus (a little before I got into Earthbound), I finally got around to watching SatAM despite feeling "poisoned" and what do you know, I loved it. I started to mellow down, thank god, and stuck around to spazz about the series for a while. Sonic/Sally became my favorite het pairing for Sonic, I shipped Bunnie/Rotor, and it was around the time the Sonic Kink Meme (kinkyclosetzone, which I helped name) opened. It's pretty much dead now, I think. XD The other day, my friend and I were talking about robot sex ("How does it work? Transformers fandom is divided over this."), and though she wasn't much familiar with the fandom, I linked her to my favorite Shadow/Omega fic (NSFW, despite wires and robotics) for referential purposes. (Her response: "Hee hee. Code-fondling.")

So yesterday, I decided to browse the kink meme to read old fills. I came across an old request of mine, which wanted Sonic/Griff from the "Warp Sonic" SatAM episode. I went on, expecting nobody answered that one ever, except... bam. A fill. Written two months after I left it. And... it's fucking incredible. (NSFW) I don't know how I never saw that fic in my LJ message box, but it's been about three years before I finally read this fic. Even though the writer will probably never know my thanks, I left it anyway. God, I wonder if I should've de-anon'd myself. But just... I'M FEELING SO MUCH EMOTION. WHOEVER YOU ARE, YOU HAVE ALL MY LOVE IN THE WORLD. ;; I wonder if it's even someone I know, though I don't think I recognize the style. I can't help but feel guilty somehow. But still... anon, whoever you are. Thank you.

Reading that fic meant a lot to me, and I've been feeling sort of crummy lately. Namely about my creativity (or lack of it).

Sometimes, I wonder if ought to finish that humongous Sonadow fic I started that was going to be one of my fandom magnum opuses. Post-SA2, Shadow was caught in space and taken inside a hidden lab in the Mystic Ruins run entirely by a sentient supercomputer named P.A.N.D.O.R.A. PANDORA likes to build creepy advanced robots, including the Leviathan, and has experimented on an unconscious Shadow for three years. Shadow wakes up before he's "ready" and steals a Chaos Emerald one of the robots brought in and escaped. Sonic, having since moved on, is troubled why he still remembers a rival he barely knew. Meanwhile, Dr. Eggman wants to seek out PANDORA and claim the lost lab and the creations inside for his own. Shit goes down in Mystic Ruins and Sonic chases Dr. Eggman. The Leviathan is trying to hunt Shadow, and the two hedgehogs meet again... Cue "WTF!?" In short, Sonic and friends must stop Eggman while figuring out what the hell is up with the PANDORA business and its connection to Shadow. Sonic & Shadow begrudgingly work together, and end up more tangled in each another than they'd like to admit, playing right into PANDORA's logic-minded hand...

If I stopped to work on it, would I feel closure? Sometimes I wonder if I should save it as maybe a future original work, but the story is clearly written to be for the Sonic universe. To take out all the Sonic essence would be robbing it of its soul. I will never be able to unsee it as something that used to be "about Sonic." I'm like this with my other incomplete big fanfic projects I started too. Augh.

tl;dr: Puri was a self-pitying paranoid moron for her latter years in Sonic fandom, and is now wibbling over old crap and a lovely fic featuring a super obscure pairing someone left her in a time capsule. She then goes on to fret about her own fanfiction again. WHOO SELF-DEPRECATION

Damn blue hedgehogs giving me feelings.

Gah, it's harder and harder to think these days. I'm not sad at the moment, but... it's so confusing. My head's all jumbled with a storm of thoughts, and I feel like writing or talking about it with someone, but I get this blank box or empty AIM window, and I never know what to type. So... I clamp up, or something?

It's also very noisy in the apartment. Albeit, my IRL friends are way chattier than I am and they don't mind this, but I feel... drained. You know how some people feel energized around others and get antsy when they're alone? I'm kind of the opposite. Even around people I like, I start feeling like I humongously need space after a certain period of time, and it's nothing against them... just "okay I need alone time now." It's hard for me to concentrate on thinking or reading or things like that when people are talking and talking all around you or playing video games or something.

At least my friends aren't the obnoxious party types. That's one thing I'm grateful for. :P More space for myself would be nice, but then I think about home and I'd rather be at the apartment than having some decent alone-time only to be interrupted by my angry Mom and that's not good. I just don't feel comfortable coming home until I get a job. And of course, the more I think about jobs, the more depressed I get. I know my parents aren't gonna help me with getting one if I come home, and it's like... the more I talk about getting employed, the more it saps my good mood and the more useless I feel. ghjkdghsgjks.

I've been going out for more walks lately, if only to get a chance alone with music and also fresh air. While it's been hard to read due to the crowdedness of the apartment, I did get some reading done... I finished Part 1 of Maurice! I'm thanking god the chapters are short because I'm easily distracted by indoor noise (I don't like reading outside though) and the scenery for reading isn't exactly great. (I've been hesitant to use the bed for reading since Reading in Bed = Bad and Will Make It Hard to Sleep, but I'm better off with the bed than the chair. Glancing between pages at the litterbox kinda kills the mood) But based on what I've read so far and if I can shut my brain off long enough to stop worrying, I'm enjoying the book so far and am looking forward to what happens next. ;; I have such high hopes for Maurice and I wanna finish it as soon as possible so I can watch the movie like dioschorium recommended and get the most out of the story. The book is rousing my emotions in all the nice ways. :o Also, Maurice himself is a derpface and needs several good slaps upside the head. Maybe not his fault considering how he was raised and how 1910s English society expected him to act, but still. LET'S SEE HOW HE TURNS OUT IN THE END.

Speaking of movies, I finally got to see Secret of Kells! It's such a gorgeous movie, I don't even hdskjghskjg. So much eye candy. I was surprised how short it was (at least according to today's movie standards), but I don't mind. Aisling's movements were so... fluid. I couldn't keep my eyes off her. :o ( Spoiler snip. )

Dad and I had dinner at a Mexican restaurant, nom. After that, I asked him to take me to Barnes N' Noble for a while. I don't know why, but while I was there, I was met with the usual comfort of BOOKS BOOKS EVERYWHERE, but I also felt this overwhelming... sadness. Something like complete disappointment in myself. I pass by the shelves with interesting looking books on them, especially those just recently published by first-time authors. Why the hell aren't you reading/writing, Puri? I suppose I could pride myself in being better than some awful YA vampire novel-of-the-month, but there's the fact they actually finished a damn novel and got published. And I'm not even close to having a full manuscript. Then there's the books that look awesome and original, and I think, "Oh god, I'm nowhere like that, they're so much better than me. I should be ashamed. Why should I even try--o god what the fuck no I still want to but I feel inferior. But--But--I'm so full of 'buts' and excuses." I get a little excited because a couple books that looked neat to me mentioned stage magicians, but I'm also thinking, "My god, what if stage magicians/illusionists/escape artists are going to become a trend? By the time you even finish your book, if at all, people are going to take one look at the illusionist character in your novel and think, 'Oh god, not another one. Another author hopping on the bandwagon, I see.'"

( Novel whining. I'm getting rid of a character I have no interest in. )

I still feel humongously tempted to start my novel from the beginning again, constantly. My current first draft is virtually the opposite of my NaNoDraft, and nothing is consistent. I know what my plot is, but I can't organize it for the fricken' life of me and it makes me really upset. I can share some passages, but I'd be hard-pressed to show things from the beginning in order because... hdskjghdskjghdkg it's a muddled mess. And I don't even know where to go next. I know specific scenes, but I don't even know what all the rooms in the museum are. And I really don't want to quit on this novel because it's so important to me. I love the ideas I have for it so it's definitely a case of Writer's Block. Am I revealing too much at once, aka things that should've been spoilers from the beginning? Just... gdhsgdskgjdskg

I keep telling myself to make a damn LJ post exclusively to explain what my book is about. I should. I am so goddamn embarrassed about the earlier entries regarding my novel because they sound so goddamn skeevy. Gods, there I go, being paranoid and self-conscious again.

Note to self: When I see my psychologist tomorrow, talk to him about your insecurity/lack of confidence in yourself. GAH PURI JUST GO FOR A WALK ALREADY. I need to clear my head before I sit anywhere near a keyboard again.

I don't know what's wrong with me as usual.

Lalala, the Espeon search continues. X( The Raggedy Ann books are paid for, at least. It'll take five days 'till they're at my house, then I can dig in. Nomnomnom.

I haven't written anything in a long time, and it's making me feel depressed. I still have inspiration, it's just that I need experience goddammit, or I'll be blocked forever. Then there's all the other issues, like my pickiness/self-criticism/procrastination. I really do need a tutor, don't I? I know I can do better than this or this or heaven forbid this. (No pun intended) I know I can get published. I'm getting tired of saying "I just gotta get my ass in gear" then do just that, then get distracted and worn down. Way to go, me.

The entire Long Ridge Writing course is fucking expensive. After the Raggedy Ann thing, I don't think it's a good idea to mention anything involving money with my family for a while. Plus we're getting ready for my brother's graduation, so we'll be busy with that. I have until June 15th anyway. Plenty of time for everyone to settle down.

Maybe I can poke at my other novel for a while? Either way, I need to shower. I feel icky.

Puri feels tired. :( I got awful sleep last night simply because I was raging over a stupid paragraph of dialogue I was trying to write. I still couldn't get it right, and I was still cranky by the time I was too tired to keep at it anymore. Just... ghsjdkghkdsjg. It's dialogue. Why is it giving me so much trouble? I can't think, I have the dumb. Ugh.

The family and I watched The Full Monty though. It made me happy~ ♥ *singing* I believe in miracles~! Where're you from? You sexy thaaaaang~ Now Tom Jones is stuck in my head again, only this time he's singing, "You Can Leave Your Hat On." Oh baby. XD

Day 5. A song/artist you turn to when you're really angry

Nine Inch Nails and Tori Amos. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have made it through my high school years and probably even early college. There's a TON of artists I listen to when I'm angry (Jack Off Jill, Orgy, Stabbing Westward, Evanescence, Linkin Park, Emilie Autumn, etc.) and the list of songs would probably go on for a long time. XD I dunno. Equip me with The Downward Spiral and Little Earthquakes and you saved yourself a year or two of a teenage Puri strangling everything in sight.

Tori Amos - The Waitress. There's... a story behind that. I made "friends" with a couple BFFs who I admired and secretly resented at the same time, and like the lyrics suggested, I scared myself thinking how violent and hateful I was and felt guilty for having thoughts like that. (I want to kill this killing wish) One of the BFFs wasn't as monstrous as I thought she was, and my feelings killed what little acquaintance we had left, Othello-style, and the other... actually was quite verbally abusive. (Boys all think she's living kindness (Heh) // Ask a fellow waitress) Listening to this song is looking at the mirror and seeing my 15-17-year-old self again. It's strange. At least unlike my past LJ entries which would make me cringe to high-hell and back, I can hear this song and reflect without wanting to smash myself in the face.

For NIN, you gotta love Somewhat Damaged. Starts off calm and repressed, but gradually teeters over the edge... then RAAAAAAAAAAGE! I like music that I can tear things to shreds to~ ♥ As a teen, I related to I Do Not Want This so hard. Well, except wanting to "fuck everyone in the world." Definitely didn't want that. But you know what I mean. XD

You don't want to piss off Emilie Autumn. I can't think of a better and creepier punishment than in Gothic Lolita (If I am Lolita, than you are a criminal // And you should be killed by an army of little girls) and many songs like Opheliac, Misery Loves Company, Liar and Let The Record Show are built of pure unadulterated wrath. Which suits me perfectly. 8) Oh yeah, she knows where you sleep.

( 30 Day Music Meme )