This is just a very brief and short and rather pointless update to let anyone who actually cares about crazy things like my fanfiction know the good news.

I have just this minute (well, more like about 10 minutes ago) managed to finish Chapter 20 of 'Seuche'. It's the longest yet - a massive 9,660 words - and it's really pretty angsty and hectic and is full of darkness and bad things and angst, which makes me happy even at three o'clock in the morning. Mainly because it's done, but at least partly because it is Done and Angsty. This makes me happy because it makes me feel as if I have actually managed to do something with my day instead of just sitting there managing nothing at all.

Oh yes there is much satisfaction. Much and much.

I like Chapter 20. It feels good, after all that stress. It looks right on the screen.

So with any luck, provided nothing happens to stop me from going online tomorrow, I should manage to upload Chapter 16 of this damned fanfic. If not - well, it'll be here sometime over the weekend unless anything untoward and unforseeable happens. Thank you, oh muses and fanfic Gods, for giving me several hours of uninterrupted inspiration and letting me finish my pesky chapter and get everything I wanted to have happen in it happen and not push me over 10,000 words. I write long chapters, but I've decided that would be too long even for me...

The down side? Because I was busy with my writing and didn't want to break my flow, I missed dinner. I'll make something now. Given that I'm keyed up and my brain is active from writing, I'll be up for an hour or so anyway because otherwise I'll be too high on creativity to sleep. Or something. But I always have difficulty sleeping if I have been writing for real too soon before bed (rants and MSTs don't count).

So yay. Plain yay. I feel good about myself again.

Oops, that was a near one, almost thought I'd lost this post again through hitting 'Enter' in the wrong place. But I didn't. Someone up there likes me, at least for the time being. Now to eat and wind down and actually get some sleep and hopefully post this chapter - or rather the next chapter as Chapter 20 would do you all no good at all - sometime tomorrow night. Well. Technically tonight, it being very early saturday morning. Whatever, though. Soon. With any luck. Yay.

I promised it, and here it is. The oft-delayed, much-missed (if only by its author) Seuche Update. Yes, you see, sometimes I write fanfic, and occasionally I will update some of these stories. Today, it seems, is one of these days.

Seuche Chapter 16: Allein

The sad thing was that posting had the knock-on effect of my poking round The Pit for a while, and it reminded me that, whilst I may have found a few little gems on that site, the majority of the fics archived there, and the people who post their work there, are rather on the daft side. Why else do so many godawful stories get gushing reviews full of praise? The mind boggles, then bursts. Yes, it may be that I am a horrible hypocrite - I have no idea if I am any different but hey, at least I'm actually trying. That's got to count for something, hasn't it? Hasn't it?

...damn, some fanfiction.net summaries are amusing. Some of them look tempting, some of them send me running screaming in the general direction of Away, and others have me rolling in the aisles - and others are so bad they have me considering taking a peep at the story just to see if they really are as bad as the summary makes them sound. This one, though, is just funny. Get this.

'Omi's [is Ken's] closet friend but is Ken falling for him?'

Well, given that Omi's his closet friend, I'd say there were no real problems in line for Ken there. Maybe I'm overtired, but the whole idea of anyone having a closet friend amuses the hell out of me. The mental pictures - and there are numerous different ones - that misspelling (Freudian slip?) provokes are just amazing. Ken has a closet friend. Heh.

... ugh, two girls join Schwartz. That's a 'run screaming' type summary. Story based on an Evanescence song. Forgive me for passing on that one. Weiss are replaced with Aya-chan, Asuka, Yuriko and Sakura? Um, what? Asuka's dead. Either she died when she was shot, or she was Neu and died when Youji strangled her. She can't be joining anything. When a summary's got a logical inconsistency like that in (dead characters are... well, dead), it's a fair bet I won't be reading any further. Moving swiftly on... yeesh, why do so few people put any thought at all into their summaries when the summary is the bit that people read first, and what determines if they'll read on? I know I'm hardly brilliant at them, but at least I try and spell my summaries correctly. And I'm trying. I read this rant and I'm trying to follow its wise teachings...

Ugh, no, I will not read another nine-chapter monstrosity about Omi falling for a female assassin. What is it with me and these godawful Sue fics? MARY SUE LITMUS TESTS FOR EVERYBODY! Gaah!

Oooh. vermachtnis did a wonderful summary for 'Aufurstehung'.

Oh, and a reader known as 'Asinine' has absolutely made my everning. Check out this gem of a review of an OC fic. Yes, I did run this OC through the Mary Sue Litmus Test. I swear she would have scored higher if I hadn't only had Chapter One of the story to go on. Apparently it gets worse. But top marks to Asinine. And to the girl who reviewed after her who also called the chara for a Mary Sue. Check out 'Chapter 4 - Flame Response' for extra shits and giggles, where the author posts an extremely rude reply to her critics. Better yet, she denys Mary Sue. Oh yeah? Obviously, dear, you don't have a clue what Mary Sue is. She claims to like 'constructive criticism' but instead of listening to some of the valid points made - about tenses, bad grammar, etc - just gets on her high horse and bitches like a good'un. Oddly amusing, that.

It's good to know not every reader on ff.net is completely addled.

I need to do the same with 'Angel's Love'. Or, as it's now been retitled, 'Angel', in keeping with the author deciding she didn't like the name she was using halfway through. I didn't think it was possible but the title's actually got even more forgettable and cliched than it was when I first ranted about it. This strikes me as rather sad. Who's going to remember a title like 'Angel'? I wouldn't.

Seriously, this is lame. I'd like to change one of the early chapter titles for 'Seuche', but I'm not going to because it's already there. I chose it in the first place, so I can live with it. It's the same with this idiot ficcer deciding she didn't like her OC having the name 'Tisha' and decided to change it to 'Selene'. Her explanation? Tisha was the character's family name. So why has her boyfriend been calling her by it, story (I won't go into the fact that her boyfriend is Ken and why Ken is really not straight)? And why doesn't he find out her actual birth name until the OC asks about it? God damn, it's stupid. You made your fanfic bed, go lie in it!

Hm. The chapter numbers have updated on my fic, but the story's still on page 7 of the archives. I hope it goes back to the top...

Yay, hide songs. I was listening to 'Breeding' all the time I was writing yesterday, so I thought it was only right and proper that I listen to the same song when I did this post. Plus, it's a good song and I haven't heard it in ages - well, unless you count listening to it for five hours straight last night for the sake of a bit of background noise because it would help me to concentrate - so it's only fair.