Random thoughts

[brigdh]

Remix assignments are out! Ah! Other people, come flail with me.

Anyway, my extra icons are expiring soon, and LJ has informed me of this by email, as it does. Which would be fine, except apparently LJ is Really Concerned that I am aware of the status of my icons and has already sent at least ten emails. They're coming nearly every hour. I get the point, dude. Do not worry! I fully intend on renewing my icons (as much as this, and the weird issues you had with posting and comments a few days ago, makes me reluctant to give money to you); I just assumed that since I had two weeks before they expired, that there was no reason to rush.

But I'm in a very good mood. I have fresh sourdough bread and sharp cheddar cheese from a farmer's market, which seemed to have far more vegetables than it has in months. Mostly apples and potatoes, unsurprisingly given that it's February, but it's still hopeful. And there were all sorts of flowers for sale: just the green little tips of tulips and lilies and so on poking up above the dirt in their pots.

Remix! Ah!

Comments

[b-hallward.livejournal.com]

I lost power for five hours today! Remix assignment day! *flails*

I have fresh sourdough bread and sharp cheddar cheese from a farmer's market

Yum...

Here it's finally starting to feel like spring is going to come, that it isn't going to be cold and miserable forever -- there are hundreds of snowdrops blooming in the yard, along the fence and mixed into the grass.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That's terrible! Oh, I can't imagine how that would drive me crazy. I would have spent the entire time anxiously checking and re-checking to see if it had come back yet.

there are hundreds of snowdrops blooming in the yard

Lovely. We still have snow on the ground (not that there are many places for flowers to grow anyway), but it's so nice to be able to begin to pick out these signs of srping starting to appear.

[b-hallward.livejournal.com]

And now that I've got my assignment, I'm flailing even more. Intimidation! OMG!Remix angst! And this anonymity thing is already proving to be a pain, because I want to complain and explain and demand sympathy.

Ahh! *flails*

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

May I join you with another curse on anonymity? My issues are not yours, but I'm flailing like a big long flexible flail-like thing, and THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE I NEED TO FLAIL WITH, OKAY???

But I can't. I can't even do a vague description of my issues without totally blowing anonymity. It's making me insane. Insane enough, as you will have noticed, for the capslock of doom, and that almost never happens.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

And my issues and self-absorbsion are such that I even forgot to say: Intimidation? Girl, you are surely having a little joke with us. There are no YnM writers who you should reasonably find intimidating.

But you have my sympathy anyway, as one situationally crazy person to another.

[b-hallward.livejournal.com]

I won't say anymore since I think this is one of those things that will be funny. Eventually.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Isn't the anonymity terrible? For all that the challenge wouldn't be the same without it, I always find myself breaking down and forcing someone to listen to my explanation in email. Because: angst! And pain! And terror! It all needs to be shared.

Though I have to agree with Phoebe: who on earth are you intimidated of?

[b-hallward.livejournal.com]

Hey, I can be intimidated. The Yami crowd this year was a pretty fine selection of writers. And most of them write things that are of the I could never in a million years write that sort.

angst! And pain! And terror! It all needs to be shared!

Yes! And I'm not sure how to find a person to listen, since most of the Yami people I know well enough to presume on like that are doing remix. Is it okay to tell someone you didn't get them?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I think it's just a personal issue. Some people enjoy the anonymity aspect, and therefore wouldn't even want to know that you didn't get them, whereas some people don't get as much fun out of that part, and therefore willingly and frequently give away the secret. Personally, I fall on the side of wishing none of it was anonymous, so you're more than welcome to tell me, if you'd like. Heh, it would make you actually the third person I've already discussed assignments with, so clearly I find it okay.

[b-hallward.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'm afraid I may take you up on that. I have managed to calm down from my initial panic by putting the whole thing out of my mind, but, uh, don't be surprised if you find a plaintive email in your inbox as soon as I turn my mind to it again. ^^

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hey, feel free. I wouldn't have made the offer if I hadn't meant it.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

And hey, it turns out we're all pretty much in the clear on it! I just found the following exchange with Victoria herself buried in a comments thread:

is it okay to have a beta whose also in the remix? Or to bounce ideas around with a partner as long as the recipients still don't know who has who?

yes. The idea is to not let the person you're remixing in on the secret, or the whole world, but a beta or two and a handful of friends is fine.

So to the extent that there's been any quiet behind-the-scenes finding of individuals to bounce problems off and/or to beta, it turns out that it hasn't even constituted flouting the rules while the authorities weren't looking. This surprised me a little, but it was a happiness-making kind of surprise, so I thought I'd pass it along.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

They are? Then where the hell is mine? This is anxiety-causing enough, without having the thing held up for hours after everyone else has been notified.

Ah, remix. Angst from beginning to end, and yet, somehow irresistable anyway.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, no! I got mine just a little before 6, and assumed everyone's had been sent out then. Though now that I think about it, I wonder if Remix doesn't have the same problem Yuletide has been dealing with for the last few years: with such a large number of emails going out at once, they have to be staggered to keep from being filtered out as spam.

But poor you. I'd hate to be stuck waiting.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Well, as long as it's not a genuine problem, and I'm not going to have to go wailing to Victoria that the cyberdogs ate my assignment, I guess it's okay.

Almost. Kind of. Damn this anonymity, anyway. If I can't flail over my own assignment yet, it would be nice to at least be able to flail over somebody else's.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Okay, I have it now. And I share in your flailing, but at least now it's flailing with a little more in the way of direction to it.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear you got it; at least there's no problems with the system, then.

But yes. I am consumed with flailing! (Or, more accurately, have now decided that I'm not even going to think about it for a while, and have gone off to edit a different story.) And though for the sake of anonymity, I have to be vague, I can say, dammit. This year I'm going to have to do something really, really good.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

I suspect Vic's doing it alphabetically, and in batches to avoid being labelled as spam. She'll make an announcement when they've all gone out, I'm sure, and we can let her know if we didn't get ours by that point.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That's reassuring to hear; I was paranoid enough that I've just come back from checking to see that the email hadn't been processed as spam on my side, and that the email address I'd signed up with was actually working. I'll stop now, and given my place in the alphabet, I may even manage to chill until at least midnight or so.

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

(as much as this, and the weird issues you had with posting and comments a few days ago, makes me reluctant to give money to you)

I never had an issue with comments not showing up, but my comment notifications have been wonky for the last week or so. it is quite frustrating.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

For about a day earlier in the week, I couldn't post anything, and couldn't leave comments that were longer than a sentence or two. It drove me insane; I was so mad.

My comments, however, have mostly been okay, though there have been some delays.

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

I hate it when the comment notifications go down, as many times I post questions, and I would like to get the answers to them! But I can't always remember where the original post was to go and check. I am also paranoid that people will talk to me and if I don't respond they will be offended, when I really do care.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that bugs me too. You know that you can check comments posted to your own journal by going to "My LJ"? But that's usually not helpful for me personally, because I'm much more likely to forget about conversations going on somewhere else. I hate to just not respond, or not hear something I was interested in.

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think I know what you are talking about. If you a non-paid user thought you can only see the last 10. since my friends and I are in writing classes we do a lot of comments and back and forth. Things can get buried and bumped off the page fairly quickly.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, that sucks. I do so hate it when LJ has issues; I depend on it for so much.

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

Me too. It is nice when I forget to take my paper to school and I need to run to the library and print it out. I just think commenting on writing stuff is much easier online. It's so easy to just copy and paste the lines you are referring to, instead of trying to squish comments somewhere on the paper.

[ravenbell.livejournal.com]

I'm pinch-hitting this year, for better or for worse (and mostly because I couldn't qualify for more fandoms). Have fun!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Did you not qualify for anything? Or did you just not want to do the fandoms you qualified for?

But regardless, I hope you get something to pinch-hit, and that you enjoy it!

[weirdquark]

It's probably another happy-fun LJ glitch. I know I got comments a couple days late all at the same time a few days ago. And this one feed keeps dumping every single post on to my friends list every time they have a new post, which eats my friends page. Whee!

::flails companionably, even though she isn't doing Remix, except possibly as a pinch hitter, because flailing is fun::

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it seems like everyone's been having one problem or another with livejournal lately. I wish they'd spend more time fixing these sorts of things that making bright pink layouts for Valentine's Day and encouraging people to embed videos and so on.

*hooray, flailing! ♥*

[rm.livejournal.com]

Remix aaaaaah! It's all so obvious.

The beggies were great at the market today!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, hush. You knew who'd you be getting assigned as soon as you signed up. *grins*

Weren't they? It makes me all happy! But I miss the tomatoes; those are my favorite.

Also, I will finish this Swordspoint story either tonight or early tomorrow. I'm all excited. I haven't written anything in nearly a month.

[rm.livejournal.com]

ooooo exciting. so did you get me? I'm not supposed to ask, am I?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Not really. But I'm not terribly fond of the whole anonymity thing, so I'll tell you anyway, though not here in case someone's watching who does want it to stay a secret. Send me an email if you're really interested.

[solo.livejournal.com]

Just a heads-up: careful when you buy your new icons! A friend of mine noticed that when she did that recently, LJ set her payments (for lj, icons, everything) to automatic renewal, even though she'd selected manual previously.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Huh, I hadn't heard of that. Thank for the warning! I'll be sure to watch out.

[kessie.livejournal.com]

Remix! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! *freaks out*

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ahhhhhhhhhh! *grins*

Are you terribly worried? This is your first year playing, isn't it? I was so freaked out last year.

[kessie.livejournal.com]

Yes. :( I just keep looking at the stories and thinking, How am I supposed to do anything with one of them? They're perfectly wonderful as they are, omg I'm going to fuck up, ahhhhhhh.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Aw. *pets*

You can't really fuck it up, though. You're not actually doing anything to the original story- it will still be there, no matter what you write. Think of it as, like, a fanfiction of fanfiction instead!

[kessie.livejournal.com]

:S I am going to let things tick over in my head and see if anything presents itself as a plausible idea. I need to give the canon a decent reread anyway. :)

(Also, for some bizarre reason, YM isn't letting me add you. I keep staring at the screen and mournfully thinking of the days when YM and I worked well together. Sigh.)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's pretty much what I'm doing. Though I'm familiar with the canon, I figure we've got plenty of time to let things sit until I won't be so worried about it.

(Ta-da! Now it works. YM is the only IM I actually manage to use consistently, because I like how it tells me when I get new emails.)

[redshoeson.livejournal.com]

*flails*

^^

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

*flails back*