I'm Fitia. This is my nerd zone.

I might’ve just not managed the later part of my day as well as I should have – something I’ll have to fix, come tomorrow. Once I’m finished with my laundry, I’ll sit at my desk, pick up a pencil, and lock in for real.

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Time: 4m27s

Notes:

• Both the tone and the fact that there was a four-day gap between this prompt filling and the last is likely showing how unmotivated I've been feeling about this! But I'm the one who imposed this challenge on myself, and I'm absolutely not giving up on it.
• This really was written in a "get it over with" sort of way, so there's not much I feel like commenting on.

Prompt: Talk about a piece of your own writing you don’t like so much anymore, and why you think it no longer works.

A while back, I had to abandon a Naruto longfic project. I was very passionate planning in the moment, but as time went by and my renewed obsession for the series began to fade, I had to be honest about myself and realize that I just wasn’t going to manage a project that long, complex and ambitious.

I did go back to reread the prologue chapter I’d written for it though, and cringed as much as I expected to, haha. I don’t think it was bad, necessarily, but I saw what I was attempting to do stylistically and felt it just wasn’t working for the kind of story I was writing. The POV was meant to be child Sasuke’s, and I don’t think I wrote a very convincing or appropriate voice for him. I was also pretty meandering in attention, and the mood wasn’t set as well as I’d wanted.

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• Definitely not entirely pleased with the structure here, and I could’ve spent less time introducing the fic itself and focused entirely on the prologue.
• Found a typo. Let’s all explode.
• Even considering the time-limit, I think I was too much in a rush to finish this one! It’s a difficult balance to strike, making use of all the time you have while knowing you have little time...

Really difficult question I’ve set myself here! I kind of regret it: I have so many songs I have saved on Spotify already, for example (over 1500!!), and while I certainly do like most of them, I obviously can’t listen to them all constantly, and fora* variety of different reasons at that. I prefer upbeat songs for easy listening, I have to be in a specific mood for others, I’ve listened to some too many times already, etc etc.

Settled the difficult choice with Sticky by Ravyn Lenae. I really enjoy the vocals on that one, especially the raspy, crunchy quality of them in the chorus, and it’s a very catchy ballad. The issue is that it is rather on the slow side, so it doesn’t often make my commuting playlist... although, now that I’ve remembered it’s in my liked playlist, it’ll probably show up on there more often!

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• 149 words... I spent the rest of the time looking for where I could put the extra word :( and then realized I didn’t meet the word count because of a *typo. Misery!

• Once again went with a chatty, bloggy style because I thought the prompt warranted it.

• I had to scroll through my Spotify liked playlist to settle on a song, haha.

When I’d initially written this prompt, I had personal flaws in mind – my lack of patience, my tendency to be selfish, to take everything as a personal attack – but these are things I’ve been doing a better job of working on, these days.

All I can think of is that I’d like to have more time. I’ve learned to make use of the time I currently have, but it’s never enough; as much as I wish otherwise, I’m ambitious, I want to better myself and surpass myself creatively, I want to be knowledgeable about many things at an expert level. This is obviously putting a lot of undue pressure on myself (which, again, I’ve been getting better about!) but the desire is always there.

It’s also very unrealistic in terms of making plans to reach it as a goal, so I’m not sure how to answer the second part!

• When you're not doing something consistently, you really do feel your ability to do it atrophy in real time... This wasn't as well phrased as I would've liked, but it's written, so I'll have to settle for that.
• Wrote two words above the limit so I had to go back and trim two unnecessary ones further back. Otherwise, I wrote this in one go, though without much eloquence.

I make a point to try and be as kind, understanding and generous as I possible with everyone I meet, but lately I’m starting to suspect that what I’m actually being is a bit of a pushover. I don’t think I manage establish boundaries very well, and I’m terrible at standing my ground or committing to my principles whenever the situation calls for it: often, I find myself laughing along when there’s a bad joke, or changing the subject when there’s a disagreement.

This is one of those things that’s incredibly difficult to work on, because I’m terrified of being abandoned or pushed aside, and standing your ground necessarily implies great sacrifices in relationships. I feel like I’m in multiple where our base principles are incompatible, and that ultimately there’s no way to deal with this while respecting the other person’s intelligence other than ending the relationship... it’s honestly terrifying.

• Spent half the time trimming and rearranging sentences this time around. Initially, I actually wrote less than the assigned word count, for once!
• Some very long sentences this time around. I mean, there usually are, but I didn't make a conscious effort to write shorter sentences today. I think my tendency to overexplain really reflects in my writing. Which is why I'm doing this exercise in the first place!

When I reread The Haunting of Hill House this year (or, technically, at the end of last year), I remember still not being able to follow a lot of what was happening in the dialogue. There’s a lot of indirectness going on in it, especially when it came to Luke and Theodora: I got the impression that all that they were saying was skin-deep and playful, saying things only for the fun of saying it.

This makes it sound more like I do have an interpretation, but don’t have the confidence to stand by it. It might be that, in a way. I’ve mentioned it before, but trying to word how a widely celebrated classic book affected me is very intimidating, what with the risk of sounding stupid about it. There are so many things that it feels wrong to be amateurish about... I’m not able to shake the feeling.

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About two days ago, I watched Princess Weekes’ video on 12 Angry Men. I’ve been following them for a while now and only sporadically watch their essays, but found myself interested in this one seeing as that it’s one of my favourite movies of all time.

It was fairly engaging! I expected a lot more media criticism, and an examination of the movie on its own, but I wasn’t disappointed by them using its themes as an opportunity to talk about the broader concept of justice, and to relate the story to the ongoing injustices suffered by Black Americans at the hands of the justice system and law enforcement. I even learned a few new things: I didn’t know, for example, that attorneys in criminal justice could have a say in who sits for the jury! Strikes me as a system ripe for abuse and corruption. The more you know.

Knowing a few things about comparative history, Meiji Era Japan, and 19^th century Madagascar has got me curious about State-led “modernization” efforts in the 19^th century in general. Specifically, “modernization” that arises in response to the threat of Western imperialism.

Everyone knows that Japan’s opening to the world was kickstarted by just that, so learning that similar efforts happened in my own country in response to encroaching Western powers ended up sparking my interest: Madagascar only became a proper “State”, as recognized by a Western-led international order, in order to secure a safe position in a world that moved according to that order. It had me wondering about other countries or political entities that might have similar moments in their histories: the Ottoman Empire, for example? Hawaii? Other African kingdoms/polities?

It’s a question I haven’t gotten around to answering for myself, but that stays in the back of my mind.

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Time: 1m39s left out of the allotted 10 minutes.

Notes:

• Deeply regret wasting that final sentence. I feel like I didn't dig into the "why" enough, which had the simple answer of this topic being in line with my general interest in the history of Western imperialism in the 19th century
• I wrote over the word count for this, and then went back after I was done writing everything in order to trim it. As usual, it was the opening sentence that needed the most trimming. I love my adjectives too much.

I’m a fairly short person, and pretty slim, so there are a lot of clothes in my wardrobe that I’ve had since I was twelve years old that I still wear regularly. Taking the top I’m wearing right now, for example: it’s still long enough on me for it to be halfway a dress!

I favour it during the summer months because it’s thin and sleeveless, and also because I like the way it looks: it’s got pretty diamond patterns over it, in complementary greens and yellows and contrasting reds; it just screams summer, to me. It’s also got that loose piece of cloth over the chest – that I do not know the name of, because I’m as clueless about fashion as I am about architecture and botany – so I can continue on my several years and counting bra-less streak.

One of my favourite and most worn pieces of clothing!

• When I wrote this prompt I had my teddy bear in mind, but then I figured I'd go for an amusing anecdote about how ridiculously small I am.
• The challenge with this one was the usual problem with vocabulary. Otherwise, I'm satisfied with how I described my outfit.
• I wish I'd written "nearly" a dress instead of "halfway" though.

Let the record show that Persona 4 is not good. It does, however, have Yukiko and Chie.

The game’s strengths were in its resonant coming-of-age teen psychodrama elements, and I think the stretch of it in which you encounter Chie and Yukiko’s Shadows subsequently really demonstrate that. It’s such realistic and empathetic emotional writing: Chie having all her embarrassing, guiltily suppressed petty resentments for her best friend revealed against her will, and learning to accept that she does have those feelings, which in no way lessen her love for Yukiko; Yukiko having her own shameful resentments and desires broadcasted for the world to see, and finding peace once her friends see those parts of her and both sympathize with her and accept her regardless. Bar none, the most compelling and enjoyable sequence in the game.

All-in-all, I found Persona mildly interesting conceptually, but far too ethically mean-spirited to be enjoyable.

• Went into this focusing on keeping my intro sentence as short and concise as possible, and trying to give the text more of a voice. I think I succeeded on the former, and the latter... kind of? Not satisfied with said voice, but at least there sort of is one.
• The bulk of it is still too unwieldy, even with the word-limit. I'm a lot more satisfied with precision this time around, seeing as I managed to describe exactly what Chie and Yukiko's Shadow plotlines did for me, but I'm not satisfied with the exact language used. I really, really need to train vocabulary more than I currently am.