invaders from the fifth dimension

[raven]

I've had a nice weekend. The Siren is back from Forn Parts, and I'd missed her; we managed to go grocery shopping this morning without anybody crying; yesterday was eruthros' birthday and part of how she chose to celebrate was watching "Bride of Chaotica!" (note, the exclamation point goes inside the quotation marks.)

(My favourite part: Satan's Robot. "Invaders from the fifth dimension! Invaders from the fifth dimension! Invaders!" - Harry dings it - "invaders.")

Also:

Me, yawning: Okay, it's late, I should go home.
eruthros: Once again, you get away with seeing The Sentinel.
Me: I promise you before I go, you can show me The Sentinel. You can tie me to a chair and show me The Sentinel.
livrelibre: We can prop your eyes open with toothpicks.
Me: We're gonna need a safeword.

It was a lovely evening.

In other news, I have made no progress on Remix whatsoever, gavagai and I have spent a lot of time recently discussing the many many LOTS of times Rupert Giles is awesome [note: spoilers for the Buffy season 8 comics, if you're into those] and I was pleased to note that although lgbtfest has retired for the time being, queer_fest has appeared to take up the slack.

(Partly because of this, I've put all my Buffy fic onto the AO3, after a good long while of dithering about it; the problem is it's right on the edge of writing I am embarrassed to have on the internet - 2002 and 2003 are pretty much a no, so most of my Harry Potter fic and all of my SG-1 fic is not archived, and the M*A*S*H stories have already been read by everyone in the world I am comfortable having read them! - but the Buffy stories were written in 2004. And so they've gone up, with the caveat of I-was-sixteen-when-I-wrote-this appended to the bottom. And they've got kudos! After an initial dislike, I think I can say I'm definitely come around to the AO3 kudos idea. It's nice to know people like stories I wrote seven years ago.)

In matters non-fannish, though, I am not doing so well: I am back from spring break feeling like I have a) a tonne of work to do and b) too unmotivated to get up off the couch for a glass of water and c) also too scatterbrained to do anything at the right time in the right order. I want to blame the weather - rumours of the death of winter have been greatly exaggerated - but I live in upstate New York. The weather is a given, like oxygen. I need to do some work sometime. And everyone from my therapist to my mother to the nice lady who remembers my coffee order at the vegan cafe has been telling me that it's not long till I leave, now - which is true, of course, but I do not know what I feel about it, okay. It's a mixture of oh god I will never do that much work in that short a time and oh yay I get to go home and a horrible new interloper of a feeling, which is: I'm sorry to go.

Well, I am. I am happy here. I am happier here than I was most of last year and waaaaay more than 2009. I'm happy. I could get a Wegmans shoppers' card and a New York driver's license and I'd be happy about that. This semester has been going like a breeze compared to the previous one, and even if I weren't happy to be here, I now know exactly what it's like to leave behind friends and a community and little cafes where they know you and cross the ocean to another country, and to pack up everything you own while feeling like you're leaving something of yourself behind, and I don't want to do it again. I don't. It hurt a lot, the first time.

Comments

[thingswithwings]

:/ I'm sorry you're feeling that way. I've felt it myself, quite a few times now, and it doesn't stop feeling strange and awful. I wish I could live in about six places simultaneously. We'll be sorry to see you go, too, me and E and L and the law school peeps and the barista at the cafe and all.

Probably none of that is succeeding in cheering you up. Um. I could suggest that you watch some of The Sentinel?

[toft]

IAWTC.

[raven]

Ohhh, I am going to miss you guys. Such a lot. <33

Re: Sentinel, chair, bondage, eyelid-props, and then we'll talk. :P

[gavagai]

*hugs* regarding being sorry to go - but I am glad you are happy there, and hope you can focus on that for the rest of the semester. The displacement-pain after you come back will pass but the memories of this last year won't.

<3

[forthwritten]

*hugs* That sounds like a really difficult set of feelings. I'm glad you'll have happy memories to take with you, even if leaving behind friends and a community and little cafes is sad - this is probably too preachy, but better happy memories than miserable ones, right?

[raven]

Oh, that is true, that is very true. I am just childishly fed up of leaving.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

1. (note, the exclamation point goes inside the quotation marks.)

AS ALL PROPER AMERICANS KNOW, YOU LIMEY.

2. Weirdly, 2004 (veeery late 2004) is my dividing line between shareable writing and too-embarrassing-to-share writing too. Only I was eighteen at the time, so I have no defense. :)

3. I'm sorry you'll be leaving, too; it's been such a novel pleasure being in the same time zone for a while, and sharing the WTF weather, and so on. But I'm glad your time here has been, overall, so good. And you should be very proud that you survived an upstate New York winter!

(Also, obviously I've never moved residences between countries, but I know what you mean on a smaller scale. I kind of wonder if so many people seem to have turbulent early to mid-twenties in part because of how peripatetic your life often becomes during that period. I sure don't feel as though I have another move in me any time soon. It does just hurt too much.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

OKAY SO. How do Americans know whether the punctuation was in the original? I mean this as an entirely sincere question!

2. The ten months you have on me is, of course, greatly siginificant in this matter. :P

3. I'm going to miss that too! We've managed to have so many almost-real-time conversations this year! I'm going to miss that so much.

That's a really good point, you know. I haven't lived in one place for more than a year since I was eighteen. That's got to have had some effect.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

1. Longer answer: well, technically, only commas and periods have to go inside the quotation marks no matter what. Question marks, exclamation points, semicolons, ellipses, etc can go outside if they're the writer's addition, inside if they're part of the original quotation. With periods and commas, uh...

Shorter answer: I have no idea because it makes no objective sense whatsoever.

But it's one of those things where periods and commas outside the quotation marks just look really. wrong. to the average American reader. (At least of my generation. More liberal rules may have been gaining hold since I was taught.) As in, that's not just nonstandard usage in American English; it's technically incorrect. So, yes. To me, something like "He said, 'It doesn't matter'." is as painful to look at as, say, "alright." ;)

I haven't lived in one place for more than a year since I was eighteen. That's got to have had some effect.

Exactly! It's kind of horrible to think about. Since I left home at eighteen, the longest I've ever lived in one place was at my last apartment, and that was about thirteen months. Everywhere else was around nine months tops, and often less. That is just inhuman.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

That's wrong in British English too! The full stop outside the quotes, I mean. I think - but am not sure - it's just exclamation and question marks.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

...okay, wait, so now I'm just confused. In British English, you always put periods and commas inside the quotation marks and... never put exclamation and question marks inside?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Nooooo. You put full stops and commas inside, "like this," and "like this." You put the exclamation marks and question marks inside when what you're quoting had them, and outside when you're adding them yourself. Like, I am right now looking up something off a Buffy transcript for a fic, and Ethan Rayne says, "Hello, Ripper"! which is very exciting for me, but he actually says it in a sinister monotone.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

...okay, that's what we('re supposed to) do, too.

HAS SOMEONE BEEN TELLING YOU THAT AMERICANS WOULD WRITE "We watched 'Bride of Chaotica'!"???

(see what I did there)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Someone has been telling me that you would say, "We watched "Bride of Chaotica!" regardless of whether it was Bride of Chaotica! or Bride of Chaotica.


...okay, now I am confused.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

oh oh oh. Okay. I think I see where I went wrong. I assumed that your "(note, the exclamation point goes inside the quotation marks.)" was snark directed at American usage. Now I see it was just snark directed at THE VULGAR MIS-PUNCTUATORS OF ALL LANDS.

...y/n?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

No no no! It was snark aimed at the fact the writers of Voyager named their episode Bride of Chaotica! The exclamation mark is part of the title! Because the episode is that great! !!!

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

......OH.

Okay.

We can still be friends.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

I am also now utterly confused as to why I'd always been under the impression that putting periods and commas outside the quotation marks was standard British usage, and needn't be corrected when one is an American copyediting British writing.

............

ENGLISH, WHY

ETA: like this (http://www.uhv.edu/ac/newsletters/writing/grammartip2007.09.04.htm)?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

No, that is not right, definitely not. I got freaked out, so I went and checked my British editions of books - no, the commas and full stops go inside. How very, very odd.

Oh, but! According to a speaker of American English, have I punctuated this right:

A Wisconsin case, In the Matter of Erickson, uses the following quotation: "when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw".

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

omg, now I'm freaked out. Swear to god, I feel like every American editor or style manual I've ever directly consulted has said that this is one of those big American/British English divides. My mind is being blooown. SO WHY DOES EVERYONE (IN AMERICA?) THINK THIS IS A THING?

Nope, in American usage as in British, periods always go inside the quotation marks. Hence:

A Wisconsin case, In the Matter of Erickson, uses the following quotation: "when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw."

(Enter Polonius.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

THAT IS IT I'VE FOUND IT. The way I did the sentence is how I would do it. The full stop goes on the outside! Not for direct speech, but for quotation of other texts.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

OHHHHH.

Okay, this finally makes sense. And I got myself some Education out of it, too: I didn't know that you had different period-and-comma rules for quoted versus unquoted material. For some reason I had thought you always put them outside the quotation marks, rather than only putting them outside for quotations.

THANK GOD WE FIGURED THAT ONE OUT.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad we got it! I remember now that you re-punctuated my statement of purpose for me, THIS WAS WHY. AHA.

[chiasmata]

Might it help, perhaps, to think that this was only ever going to be a year, and now it is (or almost is) your time to go, and even if you did stay, it wouldn't be the same? I know precisely one modern linguist who was happy to go home after her year abroad...

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Yes, I am in that category too. I think one of the things of living abroad is that you always leave a little bit of yourself behind and carry some sadness away. It's exactly as it should be, because it'd be awful to go away and live somewhere else and spend so much time hating all of it that you were simply glad to leave. And it's worth the little bit of sadness for all the brilliant things you get out of it.

That's easier in retrospect than at the time, though! Have a hug.

[tau_sigma]

I will look forward to reading your Buffy fic, later, as I don't think I have done before. (I don't promise to comment on them all, if any, because I am bad at detailed comments and to just leave something saying 'I love your fic!' on each one would be repeating something you already know. *g*)

I am glad you've been happy enough to be sorry to go, but sorry that you'll be sad to leave. God, what a terrible sentence. You are going home to such things, though, to living with Shim, and a job. Also, less cold winters, yes. *hugs*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Heee! A word of warning on my Buffy fic - other people wrote Spike/Xander, or Willow/Tara, or gen ensemble hijinks; I, on the other hand, wrote almost nothing but pre-canon Giles/Ethan with bonus extra violence. I, er, knew what I liked? Or something.

It is the sort of sentence that makes sense to me, yes. Thank you for hugs, my dear!

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear that things aren't great at the moment; I can't offer any useful advice, but here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZymsP11JrIo&feature=related) are ten Buffy clips which include Giles in a sombrero and Giles walking into a tree, both of which make any day better. (Don't watch clip no.2, though, unless you think that The Body has the potential for hilarious fun.) I love Giles so very much.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

This cheered me up no end, thank you! Tony Head's delivery of "Wake up in a COMA" is my favourite.

[hathy-col.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I can give any useful advice as I have precisely zero practical experience with it, but everyone else seems to be saying useful things. So, um, *hugs*

Also Bride of Chaotica! is possibly the best thing in the whole world ever.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thaaaankyou. Also, ICON LOVE! So amazing!

[fyrdrakken]

I'm glad that you've enjoyed your time in New York enough to be sad about leaving. Also glad that you put your Buffy fics online where I can notice and read them. (I do like the AO3 kudos -- it's nice to be able to give a thumbs-up to a story I enjoyed even if I can't think of anything particularly specific to say about it.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

As I keep warning everyone about my Buffy fic, it's... unconventinal. :)

(I do like the kudos idea, especially as people who'd be hesitant about commenting on years-old fic aren't hesitant about clicking the button, and you get to feel the glow that people are still reading.)

[vikingwriter.livejournal.com]

Sounds like classic post-Spring-Break-itis to me, mixed with a little wistful oh-this-place-is-quite-lovely-ness. All perfectly par for the course and part of this moving abroad (and then back home) process. Which means to say, it hurts like hell and it's sorta supposed to. Sorry! The upside of this is that you'll have wonderful memories of this year of your life, and perhaps take some of that happiness with you (or rather, some of its ingredients to make your own English Happiness similar to your New York Happiness). Regardless, many internet hugs and good vibrations to you.