I never knew a wolf could cry

Movie round up

This year, I haven’t been great at watching many movies, but I saw a couple over the last few days, so here’s my thoughts on them!

Dollman (1991)
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Halloweentown
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Halloweentown II
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Dark Shadows (2012)
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Halloweentown High
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Hello, all! So, yeah. I forgot about my DW a bit. 😅 But the prodigal enby hath returned with uninteresting updates about their life! I’m also possibly going to make one or two blog update posts for my filtered list that have to do with more private, woo-woo stuff.

Anyway, here are miscellaneous updates:

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While it never gets close to reaching the heights of Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal isn’t a half bad sequel.

While I certainly have issues with it, I’ll start with the positives.

First off, I feel like the movie captures the feel and atmosphere of the novel quite well. There is a gothic vibe in the book that transfers well into the movie, which is most prevalent in the scenes in Italy.

It’s a lot of fun to finally see Hannibal out of prison and running amok in the world. I also really appreciated that the movie keeps the respect and affection Hannibal has for Clarice. It would’ve been easy to remove that element, but I’m glad it was retained. In that vein, there are some pieces of dialogue written for the movie regarding Hannibal’s feelings for Clarice, and they’re beautiful to me.

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As is common for me, I have changed my mind lmao. I’m not making a separate blog for true crime stuff I want to talk about. If I discuss this stuff, I’ll put it under a read more and tag it for those who aren’t interested. Thank you for bearing with me being wishy washy lol ✌️ 

I might also post some of this stuff to my access list only if it’s a topic I don’t feel like discussing publicly. 

So, I amazingly read three books last week!! I hope that means I’m out of my most recent book slump. I’m going to post short spoiler-free reviews of them here.

These mini reviews are just pasted from my Goodreads, but in the future I might post more in depth reviews of books. :)

Two of these books are pretty dark, so I suggest checking out content warnings for them if you want to read either of them.

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Yeah, so, just what it says on the tin lol. I've honestly been in a writing slump for years now, it seems. I had a period where I was doing pretty decently circa 2022/2023, and I had some multichapter original projects I was going to finish and then ... I hit a wall and didn't finish them. :/ I even had a period of *mega* productivity between 2016 and 2017, where I wrote 100k+ total words across a bunch of different fics.

These days, I'm doing good if I write a couple 1k-3k oneshots over the course of a year. At least I'm writing *something*, but it's still a bummer to see my motivation and productivity take such a drastic dip.

Just sitting down and making myself write *something* is the simple answer to this. I would love to actually finish something the length of a novelette or novella, which is something I've only ever done once, and that was 10 years ago. My problem is that I always seem to hit a wall with multichapter projects, or my attention drifts away and turns toward the next shiny idea, which I probably won't finish either. That's why I tend to only commit to oneshot fanfics or short stories these days. I know I can actually finish them -- even though finishing short stuff is hard nowadays.

I know I need self-discipline. I even have a fanfic idea right now that could work as a multichapter project, but I'm at the point where I'm not even going to try to write it because the chance of me finishing it is almost nonexistent. :(

I guess I have a self-defeating attitude. If I thought more positively and had more confidence, maybe I could actually reach my goal of finishing a longer project. I don't know. Sigh.

Okay, so, I made an earlier post reviewing a seemingly forgotten Elseworlds comic, called “Batman Masque,” that combines Batman and the Phantom of the Opera. Personally, I didn’t like it very much, so that got me thinking about what I would do if I was writing a story like this.

So here are some of my thoughts:

— I would choose to write a story in the Batman universe with elements of POTO, but I would not attempt to exactly retell POTO in this format. Might set it in fantastical 19th century gaslamp setting.

— I would not make Batman a Phantom or Raoul character, unlike “Masque.” Since the original novel is mystery, I would include some element of Batman acting as the detective in the story and trying to unravel what’s going on.

— That said, I don’t think I would try to keep the identity of the Phantom of a secret from the audience. In the original novel, the reveal that the Phantom is a disfigured man living under the opera house was a real twist to the audience at the time, but now everyone knows about that twist.

It would be annoying and boring to act like the audience doesn’t know that the Phantom is a disfigured man.

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I feel like the concept of a hobbyist artist is fairly well-known and accepted. People don’t tend to question why someone would prefer to keep art as a hobby and not turn it into a career.

But you don’t see this attitude as much with writing, I feel.

Sure, it’s accepted that fanfic is a hobby, but I often see people discuss it as a helpful way to practice their writing skills before they get published.

But … what if you don’t want to get published?

I hardly ever see anyone discuss this.

For a while now, I’ve known that I don’t have an interest in trying to get my fiction published. The entire process of intensive rewrites, edits, querying, etc., sounds stressful and unappealing. Sure, self-publishing is an option, but you still need to do lots of edits and rewrites if you want the final product to be good. And you have to market yourself. I do not have the personality to want to market myself.

I do not want to try and have to tailor my stories or make them more marketable for a wider audience. I have niche interests and niche preferences. It’s easier to share my stories, both fanfic and original, online for free.

Yet this kind of attitude is viewed as an anomaly in the online writing community. If you write things, the automatic assumption is that you must want to get published someday.

But I don’t!! I find enough satisfaction posting my weird little stories to the internet and having a handful of people who comment on them.

I’m not saying that I don’t want my writing to be decent, because I do put effort into the things I write. It’s just that I don’t think I have the temperament or patience that is necessary for the publishing process.

And that should be fine. Publishing isn’t the right path for everyone.

It has been about 10 years since I realized I’m on the asexual spectrum, and it has … certainly been a journey. When I first realized I was ace spec, I was angry, sad, and bitter. Why did I have to be like this? Why can’t I be like other people? Why do I have to have something about me that automatically makes me unlovable to most romantic prospects?

These feelings weren’t helped by the fact that, at the time, I had a friend who was dating a shitty guy who was an asshole to everyone. Shitty Guy said a lot of cruel things to me about being ace spec, which still sometimes pops up in it head …

As time had gone on, I suppose I’ve become more accepting and resigned to my asexuality. But sometimes I still enter periods when I get sad about it. I’m in one of those periods now, unfortunately.

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