gryphonsegg

I made some progress on cleaning out my apartment today. I've still got a long way to go, but I'm satisfied for now with what I've accomplished today.

I started vaguely drawing comics to express some frustrating thoughts/feelings I've been having. Yesterday I used stick figures, but I saw weirdly stylized balloon figures when I went out today, and I wanted to try those. So far, I'm like the balloon figures more than the stick figures. I just need to find a way to make them dance. Now that I think about it, they look a little bit like simplified stitchpunks.

Give me the name of a character from anything you know I've read/watched, and I'll give you three headcanons about them.

I've had a stressful couple of days making arrangements for a new apartment in the same town as my new university, but I finally got everything done. Now I just have to wait and clean. The thing I'm looking forward to most is having a bigger bed. I roll in my sleep too much.

In other news, I'm on tumblr at last. It makes finding fan art much easier, and there are some people posting fic too, but I think I still prefer the journal format for my own fic and for serious meta posts. I like to have discussion in the comments.

One evening I was playing around with the YA dystopia generator and came up with a title/banned thing/controlled thing combination that seemed to fit a certain someone a little too well. It inspired a short Pyro-centered TF2 fic.

<cut text="Team fic that revolves around Pyro below the cut, no common triggers> The BLU team had seen its share of mix-ups with the weekly supply train. There were small, understandable mistakes like the time all the fruit came canned in syrup instead of natural juices, and no one complained except Medic. There were understandable but disastrous errors like the time the team received an entire shipment of bolts that were the wrong size, and Engineer had to make do with what he could salvage from damaged and obsolete buildings. Then there were the screw-ups that were just plain weird, like the week they didn’t get any milk because the space was taken up by one hundred identical tri-corner hats. BLU sent its mercenaries scientific and technical publications to keep them up to date on the latest advances in medicine, electronics, and pushing previously established limits on how much gun could be used at one time. Some of the team members ordered additional reading material for their own enjoyment. But a shipment of multiple copies of the same fiction book had to be a mistake. Besides, these books had iridescent purple covers. Sniper gingerly picked one up and read the back cover. “It’s called <em>Burn</em> by Maria Castle. ‘In a world where fire has been banned and the government controls hats, one plucky tomboy and one brooding cowboy must ignite the flames of revolution.’ Huh.” Demo laughed loudly. “Sounds like something Pyro would write!” “Pyro did write it,” said Medic. “Waaaait . . . you’re serious?” “Pyro can write?” Scout said in disbelief. “That kind of remark is exactly why Pyro didn’t want the rest of the team to know about it until the book was finished,” said Medic. “Hey, this means our Pyro’s a lass, then,” said Demo. “I win!” “Don’t be silly,” replied Medic. “Maria Castle is a pen name.” “So Scout was right?” Medic declined to settle his teammates’ debate about Pyro’s gender. Instead, he called for Pyro to come out and see the books. The other BLUs had not quite believed his claim that Pyro had written the novel until they saw her (?) reaction to the crate full of books. Pyro clapped like a seal, jumped up and down, made happy noises, hugged several copies, and did a little dance. “Uss mmpheez buxn d’bsso uh cn sn’m n grv’mmt!” Pyro mumbled excitedly. “I reckon it’d be easier for you sign ‘em out here, and each of could carry his own copy,” said Engineer. “You weren’t planning on using that crate for anything, were you?” “Srt!” Pyro replied. “Gtapn?” Engineer retrieved a pen from one of his many pockets. Pyro down the three books she had been hugging and took the pen. “Swn’s m’kpy.” She pointed at one of the three. “Uh prmzd t’snd mz pahln uh snd kpy.” She scribbled a note inside one of the books and put it aside. “Wn fr t’unnnsr. Enjy, tswnz yrz.” “I sure do appreciate it,” Engineer said as he accepted his copy. “Snpr, yr nx.” “Uh, thanks, mate.” “Fr medk’n’huvy—mk shr hvy rdziz, kay?” “I certainly will,” said Medic as he accepted two copies of Pyro’s book. “I have no doubt we’ll both enjoy your story.” “D’mo, skt, uh uhlms av yr kpiez rdy.” “So, like, this is really happening?” said Scout. “Pyro wrote some sissy purple book, and now we all have to read it or something? Man, I thought I was done with this shit when I got outta school!” Demo smacked Scout on the back of the head. “Do you want to make her angry?” “Y shd rd.” Pyro shoved Scout’s copy at him more forcefully than was strictly necessary. “Mt hz esssprrshinz. Ylk esssprrshinzn chsseen, rt?” “Uh, I guess,” said Scout. “Does it have any dirty parts?” Pyro shook her head emphatically. “It’s a young adult novel,” said Sniper. “Publishers don’t like to put graphic sex scenes in those because they’re marketed to teenage girls.” Scout’s distaste for the book increased, if that was possible. “Then why the hell did Pyro write it?” “Uhrt tbk uh wnnnd trd,” said Pyro. “Muhjnt tld mm ‘Dsiz fr tnnnj grrrls,’ suhshee sldt uhzuhwuaaynvl. Md mmpta lvtrngl nt, bt uhzrwzz gd.” In the following weeks, Pyro managed to wheedle or intimidate every member of the BLU team into reading her first published novel. She received a complimentary letter about it from Ms. Pauling and fan mail from lots of young girls and a group of older readers who called themselves Burn Moms. Scout’s mother became the president of Pyro’s fan club. The BLU Pyro was satisfied . . . until she learned that nearly a third of the fandom was on Team Spy.

A conversation in this community inspired me. The result contains a tiny bit of Heavy/Medic and some unspecified kind of relationship between Pyro and Engineer. I often default to a female Pyro, but I decided to go with a male one for this to minimize unfortunate implications.

( Short TF2 ficlet, no common triggers )

Okay . . . I think I've pulled myself back together after my Pyrosplosion. I'm ready to get meta. I don't plan to link to or explicitly describe anything gory this time, but I'll use a cut anyway because it's going to get long.

( Thoughts about TF2 and its fandom )

Valve's big announcement for Monday is that they're kicking off a string of new additions to the game, culminating in the release of Meet the Pyro on Wednesday! Official post here. Yes, I am I fan of a character from a game I can't actually play because it made me motion sick. Is that so wrong? (Don't answer that.)

It's no wonder the people behind the world's most popular war-themed hat simulator found the name of the "Safety Dance" band so offensive. I mean, Men Without Hats-- that's the stuff of nightmares in the TF2niverse!

Promo items for Meet the Pyro are now available! I am ridiculously, childishly excited for the video.

Does anyone want to offer Pyro prompts?

Course registration complete! I had to call the departmental office and get special approval in order to sign up for everything I need. I still have a lot to do, but it seems much more manageable now. I really need to get my mileage forms for this spring turned in. The reimbursement will give me more moving money.

Yesterday I did something that I had previously told myself I'd never do: I reread The Great Gatsby. I first encountered this book as required reading in high school and predictably hated it. Recently, someone who loves it convinced me to give it another try, having argued convincingly that one needs life experience to appreciate all its merits. So, I've read it again. I do not love this book like my acquaintance does, but I also do not hate it. I now understand for the first time how someone could love it, and my reasons for not loving it are rather different from the reasons I hated it before.

I'm not the sort of reader who normally notices or cares very much about the stylistic quality of the language with which a story is told. I'm more a fan of storytelling than of literature. But even I have to admit that Fitzgerald's use of language is here a great thing in its own right, painting vivid scenes and keeping them zipping along one right after the other. The book dragged for me in high school, but as an adult, I devoured it at a pace I normally reserve for action-packed stories that make me eager to find out what happens next. I still don't like any of the characters, but I now understand, in a way I didn't when I was younger, that I'm not necessarily supposed to. And even though I don't like any of them, I do recognize them now, whereas I didn't have enough real world experience to recognize them before. The problems that I have with the story now are all the same ones I have with all the other well-regarded stories by Famous Dead White Guys and many of the Not-As-Famous Living White Guys.

The main lesson I have taken away from the experience is that The Great Gatsby should not be required reading for high school students because they won't understand it and they'll end up hating it for all the wrong reasons. It makes me wonder why this is ever assigned to high school students in the first place. Its themes are not ones that make sense to most high school students. I mean, yeah, they know what adultery is, but they don't grasp the full social significance of it and probably won't even notice how much it recurs in the books. It's obvious that Tom is having an affair with Mrs. Wilson and that Gatsby wants to have an affair with Daisy, but as a teenager I honestly did not notice that adultery is all over the background. Teenagers might have a rudimentary grasp of the distinction between old money and nouveau riche, but very, very few of them have ever seen that kind of snobbery in action, and the ones who have seen it surely didn't understand all the implications. The themes of the work that really stood out for me on my second reading are disillusionment and the futility of trying to recover lost chances-- not themes that seventeen-year-olds are likely to pick up on! They still have too many of their illusions. They have not had enough time to make much of an attempt to recover their lost chances. No themes stood out to me on my long-ago first reading, and there's a reason for that.