#Raksh's writing adventures

[raksh-writes]

Having the writing itch for the first time in, like, 8 months -- actually writing again too! -- and what is it for??

Fucking Skyrim

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

Hugo Awards best novel ranking

Did not Read: Starter Villain

I was never a huge Scalzi fan and much of his recent work doesn't even seem to be attempting to be anything substantial and from what I've seen even people who like his recent stuff were cool on this. All that combined made this an easy skip.

5 Witch King (review)

I didn't enjoy reading this one and my opinion hasn't changed since finishing it. I kind of feel like this was testing the waters for a series and failed to do much interesting instead of just setting things up. Probably on the borderline of no award tbh.

4 Translation State (review)

Starts strong and gradually peters out. Outside of our protagonists most background characters feel like caricatures and the world often feels simplistic. It's still a good book and I've softened a little on it since writing the linked post.

3 The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (review)

A brilliantly realized historical setting of the 12th Century in the Indian Ocean with some magic added in. Given the attention to historical detail the characters all feel disappointingly modern though they're fun enough archetypes with Raksh and Amina herself standing out.

2 The Saint of Bright Doors (review)

Excellent book that I probably lacked the background to fully appreciate. I read some discussion after suggesting some of it was addressing Sri Lankan politics which I'll admit I didn't catch. While I could identify some of the Buddhist parallels I could only really notice them not tell what the book was doing with them.

Thoroughly enjoyed it - a unique world, enjoyable prose, interesting characters - and I'd be happy to see it win. I even considered flipping it with my first place choice.

1 Some Desperate Glory (review)

This is I expect the one that's going to stick in my head the longest. Kyr is a protagonist of all time (I am rotating her in my mind as I write this). Avi, Cleo, Magnus and Yiso are all great and so many of them have interesting relationships with Kyr and each other. Someone needs to make a hit adaptation so I can read bad fanfic about them (I'd prefer good fic obviously but beggars can't be choosers).

It deals with some interesting ideas that it addresses with wildly varying quality. The last section is the weakest and even though the ending doesn't stick the landing most of the rest of the book is great enough to make up for it.

There's a big gap between my top two and everything else and smaller but still substantial gaps from Amina al-Sirafi to Translation State and Translation State to Witch King.

Overall a decently strong set of finalists. I think any year Amina al-Sirafi was at the bottom of my list would be an exceptionally strong year and any year it was at number one would be a weak one so it being at the halfway point means it's an average year right?

[theflowergirl]

Tagged by @catwalkninja thank you ❤❤

Three Ships:

Using my fanfiction as basis, I’m gonna say VegasPete (Kinnporsche), Wangxian (The Untamed/Mo Dao Zu Shi) and Wang So/Hae Soo (Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heat Ryeo). I know it’s real love when they consume my brain completely.

First Ever Ship:

Again using fanfiction as basis, Mimato (Ishida Yamato/Tachikawa Mimi) from Digimon Adventure. I did like shipping characters in my head before them, like Cleon (Claire Redfield/Leon S. Kennedy) from RE2, but didn’t spend a lot of time reading fic/there wasn’t enough fic to read/I wasn’t proficient in English back then.

Last Song:

YourMOOD - ลาก่อน

Last Movie:

A Spirited Away rewatch with my groupchat last night. It was just as magical and perfect as it was the first time ❤

Currently Watching:

Poker Face (with @luny0) - Absolute kickass of a show. Episode 2′s dialogue is some of the best shit I’ve ever seen.

Warrior Baek Dong Soo (rewatch with @justonehappyvictory and @syolen) - Sometimes you just have to make your friends watch the romance in swordfights.

Moonlight Chicken - Beautiful, queer, touching and beloved.

Koisenu Futari - This show came for my ace life. Rarely do I feel so seen ❤

and about to start a rewatch of Someday or One Day with @fleet-off so I can cry on her about it.

Currently Reading:

I’ve been in a reading slump!! So I’m not reading anything. I need to finish Stephen King’s Bazaar of Bad Dreams (which I’ve been stalled on since 2021, not because it’s bad, I’m the bad one) so I can start something new FOR REAL.

Currently Consuming:

Nothing. I need to start making dinner!

Currently Craving:

Pizza. Maybe... for dinner? :D

tag: @fleet-off @spacesweepers @luny0 @raksh-writes @khashanakalashtar @cutewitchirl @8c @alasse-irena @syolen

[raksh-writes]

I think, I might've actually given up trying to fight with my thesis. My brain is a sloshing sludge inside my skull, its even hotter and more humid than yesterday and Im also sniffing and sneezing and blowing my nose every five damn minutes, so its impossible to focus on anything. I might actually have a case of burnout too, which shouldn’t be surprising after all those weeks of finals and all. So... yeah. I think this might finally be a time to take a proper break, especially since Im starting a two week internship on monday, and if I don’t manage to write anything for my thesis tomorrow, Im just gonna send over what I have and tell my supervisor I got sick and couldn’t write anything more. I don’t have any fucks left to give about it tbh, Im tired and in need of a proper break, so yeah. That's that I guess

[raksh-writes]

Ive spent most of yesterday doing all my uni stuff for finals and a couple hours today too, and I should be doing much more, but I can actually feel my brain giving out on me rn. Im starting to develop a headache and that's very much Not ideal. I have A Lot to do and not a lot of time to do it, ughh...

Forcing usually doesn’t work on me though, so even though my anxiety will prob have a field day, I guess I'll try to take a break, maybe play some Skyrim, maybe write a lil' more fanfic if my head feels better, and who knows, if in the evening it feels up to it, I can try to add some more to that big project Im trying to finish or start on a presentation for a different class. Either would be nice, but if its not possible tonight, then I guess I just gotta hope taking a break today will help me get back at it tomorrow.

Here's to hoping!

[raksh-writes]

Oh my god, I just got hit with Such a hardcore urge to do a fresh reinstall of Skyrim and rebuild my mod list from the ground up that it's making it Impossible to focus on anything else and I was supposed to be writing a paper for one of my uni classes today, like why, brain??? Why NOW??? 😭😭

Feels like Im not gonna be able to get my hands on anything else until I do it and it might as well take the whole day ahhhhowpghhiulaergnilaengnalg the fuck is this, help 😭😭

[raksh-writes]

I managed around 1,5 pages for my thesis yesterday, working most of the day on those, so now my brain is refusing to work with me and demanding a break, which I would Love to take buuut what I should be doing is pushing as hard as possible with writing it so I can at least try and finish this part of the chapter to send it over on the weekend. Im so tired tho...

ugh

[raksh-writes]

So tired, so lazy, and yet, the thesis will not write itself (ugh...) 😔

[raksh-writes]

Haven’t written as much for my thesis today as I would’ve liked, but I did make a nice, rough draft/online of what else I want in that section of the chapter + did some research and an outline of what I want to add to the first section, so both are more even in length (seeing as this second part is prob end up quite substantial), so I think it's still been a pretty good day productive-wise.

I definitely won’t be able to finish the whole chapter before the end of the week, hell, I will prob finish only this second section and not even start on the third one or adding all those bits to the first part, but hopefully when I send over what I do managed on friday/weekend, it'll be enough to placate my supervisior. I'll let her know too that Im gonna keep on writing the chapter and hopefully finish it by the end of next month (first two weeks are internship so I don’t see much writing being done 🙈) and send her the rest whenever its finished. Then I plan to start on the second chapter so that I keep it going during the summer.

It's all... very optimistic, I'll admit 😂 but gotta at least try to reach those goals and see how it goes, eh?

[raksh-writes]

I would love to take a break today and play some Cyberpunk, because I have a real craving for it rn, but the moment my PC starts sweating with running the game it'll turn my already warm room into an unholy sauna/oven combo of hell and Im already melting here ;_;

So. For now just Im half-heartedly gathering some snippets and sources for my thesis and trying to come up with a gameplan on how to Actually write the chapter (that I should be, by all means, writing rn) I need to turn in before the end of next week and, I guess, it Is some kind of work being done on the thesis too, if not put down on paper, but ugh... maybe I'll write down that gameplan for writing the chapter, at least there'll be Something to go off from then.

[raksh-writes]

How is that, after already working on a good portion of my Uni "stuff to do for finals", I get stressed out of nowhere? This should've lessened my anxiety, not made it WORSE, smh...

[raksh-writes]

I've been wanting to try my hand at this fic binding thing for quite a while, but I have to say, seeing @the-cookie-of-doom post about it probably gave me the final push to start, so thank you for that! ;D

And here's the start to my adventure 👀

Printing and folding done! Also a sneak peek on the color-scheme, although it's a bit skeewed because of the lighting in my room, hah. I plan to do an open back, so the stitching is visible - I might be jumping too high with french stitching on my first try, but where's the fun in going easy, right? ;p

Unfortunately, our printer did me a lil' dirty and leaked some smudges in few corners after I had to change the ink ;/ But, oh well, I guess it's alright when it's only going to be for myself, gives it soul or something ;p

[raksh-writes]

So, I started on typesetting and formatting one of my own fics 👀

It's a bit short for binding, not even 20k, but I guessed it's gonna be good practice anyway. I'll probably do another open back, maybe do that combined coptic+french stitch, see how it turns out this time ^^ And when I was thinking about it, I realized I could add my other short one-shot smut at the end with the OC I wrote in here and maaaybe even a far older one I wrote way back in the day still in polish, but it's quite nice and I like it, so why not ^^ It should make it around 25-26k and I feel that's a nice number ;p

I've also started typesetting LitA, cause even if it takes me another few months to finish it, I already have around 150k to work with, so why not get on it already ;p Sneak peek under the cut ^^

Can you see I’m kinda obsessed with this font? Lmaoo

But it's only for these two ;p I gripped with what to do for LitA, then tried this font and it's just perfect. Dunno if I gonna do the images, but I guess I'll see as I go. I kinda want to go all out, cause I've seen how pretty people make their pages, but at the same time I always end up with something more simplistic, I kinda like it clean and simple. Hmm, well, for now I like it ;p

[raksh-writes]

I can't focus on anything today, but at least I have figured out the few last scenes I need for those last two chapters and outlined them in my notebook. That has to count for something, right?

Dunno if my brain is up to it today, but I will try for some edits on chap 18 in the evening. I'd love to push it forward at least a bit, but with my current exhaustion levels, a possible update feels far away xd

Anyway, a day for just relaxing and unwinding is just as important, so if that's it, then that's it ;p

Hope y'all are having a great day/evening, have lovely weekend too <3