2021.10.23 - fanfiction and claw machines

listening to: deutschland - rammstein

i was right when i said yesterday would be better than the day before. it was a perfectly fine day - i slept for the majority of it, then woke up to my dad asking what i wanted to eat. we had fried chicken, and i ate about as much of it as i could stomach. when i rolled out of bed to come eat, my back was killing me. this strained muscle really isn't the vibe, i feel like an achy old man hobbling about everywhere. i grin and bear it, though, since there's nothing much i can do about it. just wait until it heals itself on its own.

after we ate, i mostly spent the evening listening to music and emailing my classmate. she's surprisingly fun to chat to - i get the feeling she's just like me, in that it's a bit difficult to talk in real life but much easier to talk over the internet. we've been sending pages and pages back and forth just talking about everything and nothing all at once, but in real life when i saw her, all we managed to exchange was a shy hello. not that i mind, to be completely honest. she seems like a really interesting person, and i totally understand clamming up and being too shy to talk in real life, since i've been that way for most of my life. it's nice to exchange emails, though. it reminds me of when i was a kid, when i was too young for MSN or facebook or any other instant messaging service kicking around at the time, and texting was far too expensive to be practical, so me and my friends would email each other every day after school. i have some real fond memories of those days. hell, i even set up a forum for me and my best friend to roleplay on and continue the pretend games we'd been playing at school! those were good times.

after that, i tried working on a fanfiction idea i'd been thinking of. the writing process was highly stilted, though, because i'm really not used to writing from this character's point of view so i couldn't quite get his voice right, so to speak. plus, it kept trying to veer into smut territory, and i wasn't really in the right mindset for that kind of thing.

but i did end up cranking out a quick drabble, the vague concept for which had been floating around my mind for a few days but with which i'd never quite gotten around to figuring out what i wanted to do with. the idea came to me on monday when i was royally zoinked and listening to oomph!, and it finally came to fruition last night. the perfect first line just magically appeared in my head, and the rest of it just suddenly started flowing and i couldn't stop writing until it was finished. i love it when a fic basically writes itself.

i'm not saying it's a great fic by any means, but it's a start. the working title is "such mich find mich" (it's not a songfic, i just liked the title) and it plays on the whole "secret lovers" concept, focusing on one of these rare fleeting moments they get together. it's perhaps a little deeper, emotion-wise, than the lighthearted, slice-of-life, inspired-by-my-own-life shit i usually write. i'll probably have to edit it, perhaps rewrite some of it, and i may well slap it on here, on my website. because fuck it, why not. i've never put any of my fic online before (apart from the one harry potter slash fic i wrote when i was about thirteen, which is probably still kicking around fanfiction.net somewhere *cringe*) but the idea's getting more and more tempting. i just don't particularly want any nasty feedback, that's the problem. when you put shit on the internet, you're putting yourself out there for people to say all kinds of things to you. some might say i should get a thicker skin, but there are some things i don't think i'll ever be thick-skinned about. art, and writing in particular, feels highly personal, to the point where showing somebody something i've written feels to me like an animal rolling over and exposing its belly to a predator, opening itself up to attack. i put my soul into my creative endeavors, so i do tend to perceive any criticism of my art as a criticism of me as a person. i'm not a weak little pansy, promise. i'm tough otherwise. just that i hate being criticised for what i've written.

in any case, today's been a nice day too. me and my friend went to the arcade together, played on a few machines, played air hockey and pool then grabbed something to eat. i'm getting really good at those claw games! i won a dog plushie this time. last time i was there i won a penguin, which my friend's friend christened "paul" - no relation to the rammstein guitarist, though it's a nice coincidence. so i have paul the penguin, and an as-yet-unnamed dog. when i was a kid i didn't have the patience, skill or money to work claw machines, but now when i see a cute plushie waiting to be won i'm like a machine myself. totally focused, totally cool, eyes on the prize. so i carried my new dog plushie around with me for the rest of the time we were at the arcade, and tried not to care what people would think of a grown man carrying around a small fluffy toy dog.

when we played air hockey it suddenly dawned on me what a good location that arcade would be for a date. and then i got to thinking, what if i ask S if he wants to go to the arcade sometime? i wonder if he's the arcade kind of guy, if he likes playing games and being competitive. i'd really like to hang out with him, spend a little time together and get to know each other better. the other day i texted him and he responded calling me "love" and oh man. oh man that made me feel things. he's a really friendly guy so he probably calls everybody love, but that really did make my heart flip upside down. i got all jittery and blushy and paced around the house all excited. man, i'm really looking forward to seeing him at the event next week.

tomorrow will hopefully be as good a day as today's been. i'm looking forward to going back to church, after two weeks away on account of being unwell. most of the congregants are pretty old, and it would be highly reckless of me to go to church and spread my germs to people who don't have the best immune systems in the world. it's alright for me, a young, resilient guy with a good immune system, but not for them. in any case, i'm excited to go back, and then afterwards i'll be seeing my other friend for coffee. good stuff!

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