PearlRose86- (Slightly) Random Randomness

A girl I used to know online, who I went and visited over New Year's Eve many, many moons ago, got married this weekend. I'd feel old, but hey, isn't that how life's supposed to go?

I often wonder about all the people I met online, back in 2005 or so. The people who, through RP and LiveJournal and AIM, kept a lonely young woman alive, in more than one respect. Some of you, I still have some of you friended here, but you've abandoned the platform, much like I have. Others have gone and let themselves get lost in the big great void that is otherwise known as the Internet. Still, I wish I could reconnect with some of you.

Some, I think about sending a quick message through Facebook or e-mail, for the few of you I still kinda-sorta keep tabs on that way. Just to see how you're doing. But sending a message out of the blue to a kind-of-sort-of internet acquaintance from who knows when seems just kind of creepy. Still, I'd like to say hello over a virtual cup of coffee or tea.

I'm doing better now. Happier. Chubbier too, but that's also how it goes sometimes. Life isn't quite how I expected it to be, but therapy's helping me deal with it. I'm anxious, and prone to being obsessive-compulsive and depressed at times. But still, I'm doing okay. Still doing NaNoWriMo, which I never knew could mean more to me than it did back then.

Mostly out of fandom these days, and sometimes, I miss that. Okay, often, I miss that. Not the insane thrill that comes with falling head over heels with something for the first time -- I still get that feeling, thank you very much -- but the feeling that comes with finding others that I can connect with about such things. Fandom friends, even as they come and go. I'd like to meet each and every one of you again.

But in the meantime, even if you don't remember me anymore -- I hope you're doing well. And hey, if you ever want to chat, well, that'd be okay, too.

Lois Lane's Birthday was apparently on Friday (Aug. 17), and like a bad little fangirl, I kind of forgot about it. (I have a hard enough time keeping the birthdays straight for everybody I KNOW. Let alone fictional characters!)

But better late than never, yeah?

Anyway, I adore Lois Lane, full stop. She's always been an inspiration to me--as a writer, and as a character who was always inspiring. She was hard and prickly sometimes, but she had the best heart and the most intelligent soul. She was a character in her own right--a person who didn't need assistance getting to the top. She fought tooth and nail for her spot, and was reluctant to share. She's not afraid to be herself--to go after what's right and what she believes in, even when it would be easier to hide behind anything else.

She's human, and I adore that about her. Even if she didn't have her romance with Superman, she'd still be tough, and still after the truth, at whatever the cost was. Lois wanted to be the best at her career, so she went after it. Even Silver Age Lois (who admittedly, does get some well-deserved criticism), was something special. Yes, she tried to trick Superman, but she still was a reporter, a person in search of the truth, despite rampant misogyny and the tendency to be a damsel in distress.

Lois doesn't have any superpowers. She's a normal human, and as a normal human? She's one of the most powerful people on the planet--in her world. She'll put her own life on the line, because she knows the truth means nothing if she's not willing to put her entire self out the in the pursuit of it. It doesn't mean taking the easy way out, and sometimes, it means you have to expose things that others want kept hidden. She's powerful ally to have on your side.

So Lois doesn't have any special powers; just sheer force of will and her personality. Yet, she goes toe to toe with Superman and anyone else who dare stand in her path. I love her so much because she's a strong-minded career-focused woman who isn't afraid of being a woman. Her emotions make her stronger, and no one thinks any less of her because she's female. She'll wear her dresses and skirts (or whatever's most practical for the story at hand!) and doesn't feel a need to play the "good old boys club" game in order to get to the top. It's all about her own terms--doing it her way. And with nothing that she'd be ashamed of.

That is what allows her to keep up with Superman. That is what Clark Kent sees in her. This person, Lois Lane, who is simply true to herself. She doesn't need anyone but herself--but it's sure nice to have it all anyway.

A music post has been running around on some of my friends’ blogs, and I thought I might want to jump in this time. Music has always been something deeply personal and especially important to me. I don’t claim to be a musician, just an occasional singer and sometimes writer who has songs just jump out and speak to me now and again.

For a long time, I never really listened to what songs were about, or cared for them in general. I also thought I didn’t like poetry much, either. Then a teacher once told me that liking music for the lyrics meant I liked poetry, because wasn’t that what song lyrics were?

The simple statement completely blew my mind, and made me really reconsider my feelings toward poetry in general. Now poetry is something I really do enjoy, and as a result my appreciation for songs — and their lyrics — has also increased.

Some songs I like are shallow little pop tunes that rattle around in my brain for a while and make me tap my feet to the beat. But my favorites are usually songs that I relate to or resonate with me for some special reason. Often times, they’ve made me cry or smile or just feel.

So without further ado, under the cut, eleven of my very favorite songs and why (in no particular order).

( Collapse )

First off, hey! I'm so excited that somebody's gonna write a fic just for me. I've been doing ff_exchange for a few years now, and by far, it's the best fandom challenge I've ever participated in. So, you're already my favorite just for signing up. Thank you, thank you!

Now, I'm sure you're probably poking around this journal trying to Figure Things Out. I love FFIX. A lot. But don't worry if you're not writing either of my FFIX prompts, because I love those other prompts, too. Pretty much anything I wrote on my list (and then some) will make me a very happy lady once I see it!

------------

I love the Final Fantasy series so much, and it's so hard to just limit it to four things to want! But if you're looking for any ideas, here are a few things that make me go aflutter.

-Female characters, strong. (I heart the ladies of this series so much. They're lovely and contradictory and human!)

-Character-focused pieces. (Conversations, character development--what makes these characters tick. I especially love it when minor, one-off characters are fleshed out.)

-Shenanigans. (Lighthearted humor, banter and snark, characters doing things that are silly and chaos ensues.)

-Fic discussing character relationships (More than just romance! Exploring the strange and complicated relationships between characters, without making it all about the who ends up with whom.)

-Canon relationships (Some off the beaten path is fine, but if there has to be romance, I generally prefer canon--within reason.)

------------

Crossovers are a-okay by me if you think you can make it work, and I'm especially fond of taking two or three characters, and putting them in absurd situation, then sort of ...seeing what happens. That or serious character-driven works, where you get to see all their deep thoughts and fears, their hopes and dreams, and all of that good stuff, etc.

Tenses, voices, and such are absolutely the least of my concerns--present tense, past tense, first person and third person, whatever floats your boat--hell, write it in second-person future if that's what makes your muses happy. (Um. But that'd be crazy difficult, so I don't recommended it.)

But anyway, thanks for signing up and being amazing and awesome. I look forward to reading what you come up with!

Happy writing.
-Maggie
PearlRose86/Miss Maggie

Confession One: If it wasn't for the language barrier, I'd probably be living in Japan right now.

Confession Two: I've had a fondness for Japanese culture and Japan since I was eleven. I actually realized that the cartoons I was watching and the books I was reading and the songs I liked were part of Japanese anime when I was 15. When I was sixteen, seventeen, I'd drive the library every Saturday and check out all sorts of books. Among those were big dusty nonfiction tomes dedicated to Japanese culture and politics and history. If it was Japanese, I'd read it. Even if it was boring as hell.

Because to a lonely teenager who wanted to be a writer, who got lost in her imagination, Japan was the exotic far-off locale I dreamed of seeing. It represented the far away future, the hope that something would get better. To me, it was a way to rebel against my parents, to learn something new, to have an escape. Japan was mysterious, it was thrilling. It was all that I thought I'd never find in my life and then some. Without Japan, without anime, without Japanese culture, I would have been alone as a teenager. And if I'd been truly alone... I don't want to imagine what might have happened to me way back then.

Confession Three: I grew up, I went to college, I found some self-esteem, some friends, and a reason to get my head out of the clouds and the dreams of Japan and Asia. I dropped some of the fairytale fantasy for the practicalities behind Japanese culture (the sexism, race relations, stigma against mental health issues, and other social issues--it is not a perfect society by far), but the country has always held a soft spot in the far corner of my heart.

Confession Four: I had largely not thought much about Japan since I moved to Tallahassee. Teenage dreams were pushed aside in favor of a grownup one--to be a librarian, and a damn good one at that. Then my pal Caroline started reading Fruits Basket. And thing started rolling back with a vengeance. I remembered what I loved, what I could recommend to her, and in a way, I felt like I was doing my duty to help the next generation realize what I have loved about Japan for a long time now. It was fun to fangirl, and mock and just have someone to talk to about it: from varying opinions on Tohru, to the sheer adorable of Sana, to even some of the flaws.

Confession Five: I'm a half-white, half-Mexican girl from Florida who hasn't traveled near as much as she'd have liked to by now in her life. But Japan had always been high up there on the list, on the want to try, want to do, want to write. It's influenced me and my writing and who I am so much that I won't be me as I know it without the help of a nation the size of California out in the other side of the world.

So basically, now I'm crying as I write this and I know Japan is a developed country and they'll recover and they'll be all right in the end, but it's my safe haven, my fantasy, the land where my figurative dreams went to live as a teenager. And it's broken and bruised and hurting and I see the pictures and watch the devastation and feel so empty inside because it's like a little piece of me is shattering alongside.

Right now, though, I really want to ramble about something else entirely. So I’m going to blog about a show that probably changed my life, only I didn’t know it had at the time. ;) The past few nights, I’ve been revisiting Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman via my DVD collection. It’s a brilliantly cheesy mid 90’s show, but I absolutely adore(d) it.



I was 7 when it first started, and had just turned 11 when it went off the air. My father had been a fan of Superman comics back in the fifties, and in any case, he and my mom would watch it in the living room together at home. Something about it absolutely appealed to me, and I would often watch along with them. I don’t remember much about the show during its broadcast run, but I remember being absolutely captivated by Teri Hatcher as Lois Lane. She was clever! She was pretty. And she liked Clark Kent (played by Dean Cain), who was kind of …sweetly adorable. The show left a fond impression on me, in any case. I don’t remember much about the television run of the series (bits and pieces from season 4), but I do remember that it made me feel happy. It was a good memory.

Flash forward about ten years later. I’m an undergraduate student at Stetson, and my Grandma Ada and I were at Target over the summer break after my freshman year. She had taken me out to buy me a birthday present, and I was eying the DVD section, looking around for the latest season of Gilmore Girls (which may get a blog of its own someday). Also on that small display was Season 1 of Lois and Clark. I smiled fondly, remembering the show from my childhood, and decided to pick that out instead.

I took that DVD set home later, setting it on in my room, intending to take in some nostalgic good memories while I started unpacking boxes. Three hours later, my room was still a mess, but I’d worked my way to the second disc and was remembering all the reasons why Lois Lane had been my childhood role model. She had attitude! She had guts. She wasn’t afraid of being awesome. SHE WAS INTELLIGENT. And unapologetic, and pretty much real and wonderful and well, it was a childhood sense of awe over the character turned into a grownup admiration.

Clark Kent grew on me too, during that re-watch when I was nineteen. (And yes, I mean Clark Kent, the character, not the alter-ego, Superman.) His character was dorky, and charming! Downright pleasant, even. Definitely more interesting than Superman himself, who dropped even lower down my interest list during the watch. Lois Lane was distilled awesome, and Clark Kent was her best friend, who made her even more awesome. And happy! I do like seeing some happy out of my favorite characters.

I watched the first season that weekend, and collected seasons two and three down the road, when I had a giftcard to spend or I saw it on a good price at Amazon (or very likely in my case, a combination of the two things). I watched the seasons once, smiled, and let the show remain fondly in my memory, with the season sets tucked in a box under my bed. Lois Lane remained one of my favorites, and I even investigated other aspects of the Superman mythos (other series, the comics, the movies, etc.) But Teri Hatcher’s Lois Lane was my favorite, and my increasing disinterest in the Boy Scout in Blue led me away to other shows, like back to Gilmore Girls, and over to Avatar: The Last Airbender. (And to this day? I love Lois and Clark, the characters, but can’t stand Superman, the alter-ego. He’s so… dull.)

Then, the summer between my junior and senior years at Stetson, I was determined to stay away from my parents’ house for the summer. I had a job that I liked, and I damn well wasn’t going to quit it to suffer and be depressed at my parents’. So I bopped from place to place, until I found somewhere I could rent for dirt cheap. I could barely afford utilities, let alone internet or cable. I picked up a second job and worked forty-five and fifty-hour weeks.

It was the loneliest summer of my life, but also one of the most rewarding ones, in a way. If it hadn’t been for my writing group, I …don’t know what might have happened. But I had a lot of time to think that summer, both about the good and the bad. I ate a lot of ramen and mac and cheese. I read a lot. And I watched DVD’s, which I could get for free from the library, where I worked.

I plowed through Season 4 of Lois and Clark, which the library had just acquired. Suddenly, my admiration for Lois Lane increased tenfold, and my love affair with the love affair between Lois and Clark provided some much-needed levity in the sad state of my life that summer. It made me smile.

Flash forward a few years later. I’m doing much better, thank you, and I actually got Season 4 a little while ago, to round out my collection. This week, I decided I really wanted to rewatch the series for some reason. I think my friends’ talking about Smallville (which I don’t care for, but what I’ve YouTube’d from seasons 9 and 10 has been tolerable), made me decide a revisit to my favorite version of the mythos was in order.

I started with Season 2. I think season two if my favorite, for some reason. It has a good balance of Lois and Clark before it got crazy with the over-the-top storylines of seasons three and four, and unlike season one, they’re actually friends and their relationship progresses in a forward motion quite nicely. Also, I really, really like the episode This Old Gang of Mine.

So anyway, I was watching, and something hit me. Lois Lane, intrepid journalist. I wanted to be a journalist for a long time, back when I was choosing undergraduate schools. Eventually I veto’d that degree in favor of a field that wasn’t dying, but things suddenly clicked. I’d wanted to be a journalist. I like to write. I want to write a novel, maybe one day… actually finish a good, solid novel.

I blame Lois Lane for making me want to be a writer.

And I thank her for it.

Okay, so yeah. I meant to post the results of this like on Saturday. But I ...was lazy. And miserable this weekend. But I went to the doctor and have good drugs, so let's move on, shall we? (NOTE: My ipod is named Magical Misa-chan... long story. But it'll be called Mi-chan for short. It's a third gen nano, and although I didn't want it at first, we've come to a divine understanding.)

(Under the cut, because it's almost 2000 words, and with the embedded video, it's a mouthful...)

( Collapse )