wherein Liz's sister is moving to Spain! (for a year)

A while ago, Vicky (my little sister) applied to a program that sends native English speakers to Spain to assist in teaching English as a foreign language. She found out on Thursday that she's been accepted.

Her term starts in, I believe, late September or early October. She will be somewhere in Andalusia -- we do not yet know where in Andalusia, let alone what town, but some knowledge is better than no knowledge. Also, she's been in Andalusia before, when she spent a month in Ronda on a summer exchange program of some sort.

When the lease on her current D.C. apartment is up, she will either sublet someplace for a couple months or live out of a suitcase and either friends' apartments or possibly my aunt's house. (She wants to stay at her current job until a few days into September, to keep her health insurance until the teaching program's insurance kicks in at the start of October.) Then she will, you know, move to Spain. And begin assistant teaching. :-)

What this means for the rest of my family is that Vicky will not be around for Thanksgiving (*sadface*), and also that my parents and I will most likely be going to Spain for Christmas. To which my response is, roughly, "Cool! I've always wanted to see the Alhambra, and maybe we can!" followed a second later by, "Oh, PM is going to just love what that'll do to the schedule. Argh."

But mostly this is something Vicky is very excited about, and since she's been getting quietly dissatisfied with her current job over the past year, I am very happy for her.

wherein Liz despairs over Remix and reads Naruto out of sequence

Why am I such a procrastinating idiot? Seriously, WHY???

*despairs over her remix*

Thank goodness I can post a rough draft tomorrow night and edit during the week. Otherwise I would be in deep trouble.

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In other news, I decided to hell with coherent storylines and context and background, and started reading mangastream scanlations while they're still available. (You may have noticed over the years that I have a very 'spoilers, who cares?' attitude toward stories.) And after reading ch. 482-484, I would like to say, for the record, "Jesus fuck, Sasuke, what happened to you?!" because goddamn, has he jumped off the deep end.

So has Naruto, I think, but in a more socially acceptable way. Sakura and Kakashi are just shit out of luck stuck between them trying to be practical in an impossible situation.

ETA: Have now read ch. 485-486. Oh my god, Naruto, you are not supposed to make me cry. *wibbles helplessly* I love how Kishimoto ties Naruto's determination back to the Valley of the End, and even further back to Iruka showing Naruto that people could be kind. Yeah, it's very formulaic shonen, but there's a reason conventions become standards, you know? It's because they work. They move people.

(But really, suicide is not the answer. I firmly expect a happy ending out of the manga. No matter how many hats Kishimoto has to run through before he manages to grab hold of the rabbit... and that metaphor made a lot more sense in my head. Ah well.)

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Anyway! Back to the salt mines.

[Fic] "Strange Likenesses" ch. 6 -- Harry Potter

What if, shortly after being disembodied at Godric's Hollow, Voldemort noticed his link to Harry? A dark AU.

I posted chapter 5 in January 2008, so if you have any interest in reading chapter 6 (which is completely unbeta'ed, by the way; I just very badly wanted to finish something and my remix is giving me fits at the moment) you will probably want to read the previous chapters for context. They aren't very long -- each one averages about 2,000 words, for 10,000 words total so far.

Anyway. Story. (Fair warning: this chapter is where I start killing people. Also, Harry is currently all kinds of fucked in the head, for obvious reasons.)

( Strange Likenesses, chapter 6 )

Right. Back to remixing now.

seriously, I have got to stop being so cavalier about deadlines!

Mwahahahaha!!! I have moved beyond simple introductions and have achieved plot!

Well, sort of.

And it's not as if I never had a plot, because my plot is my remixee's plot (obviously), but I am going at it differently and so I feel as if, perhaps, I am going on and on and on about pointless things and not getting anywhere, but the stuff I'm going on about is relevant, really it is, and anyway...

*deep breath*

Right, ignore that. The point is, I hit one plot point early on, and am now about to hit another. They're a little out of order from the original story, but that's okay. This is my version of this scenario, not my remixee's version. Obviously it's going to be different.

(Oh my god, how have I written so many words and not even gotten halfway through the original story yet??? *wails in despair*)