Whispers of an Unquiet Mind

Again...

2010-01-03T08:25:55Z

No, see, I was GOING to sleep, but then there were video games and internet and books and...yeah, I'm terrible at this. I have no self-regulation at all...*laughs*

Anyway, Windows 7 is installed!  It's pretty~~  And I did the upgrade, which is an in-place installation, so it kept all my files and stuff in place--even my desktop background. Pretty sweet. Plus it was a student discount!  Niiiice...the download took about 30 hours, but running the files only took...well, about 4-5, I think. So, not bad. And it just did its thing and then here's my lil' laptop, lookin' all spiffy. Yaaay!  Although...some of the programs are different...like wordpad. I like wordpad for writing short pieces. Well, MSword feels more like a project or a big thing--wordpad feels like jotting down notes. Just psychologically or whatever. Plus I liked the look. But it got updated...now, I should point out that the updates appear to have made it more useful. I just liked the older APPEARANCE better. Just stylistically. But notepad is TOO simple. Ahhh...wordpad...I miss youuuuu...oh well. But seriously...I dunno, man...I really loved that thing...I mean the program is still there. It just looks different. More word-like. It has actual margins now, for example, and spiffier-looking toolbars. But I liked the bare-bones look. So...it's a good change and all, I just have a personal liking for the old version. Oh well.

Anyway!  Signed up for brigits_flame's thing this month. Yay prompts~~~  I skipped November because, well, nano, and I skipped December because FINALS. So yeah. Anyway the week 1 prompt is Starting Over.

Which...I actually have a lot of characters who do that, now that I think about it...in various ways. Spectre/Sarx may be the king of this, because he does this *counts* five times so far. ...although the last one is more going back and starting over with his original life and putting some pieces back in place. But the first four are pretty much him repeatedly redoing his life. Well...2 to 4 is more like a life upgrade, but he DOES run away in between. Still. He seriously has some problems settling down. Although...he has good reason...the first one was unintentional, the second one was because he wanted to find a life of his own, the third one was because his mentor was killed and he HAD to flee, the fourth one was because his third-stage life caught up with him again, and the fifth one was when he realized maybe repeatedly abandoning all relationships might be bad. And then he stabilizes. *laughs*

Svyrnn sort of does this; her life effectively restarts when she's two and switches from being raised by her parents to being raised For Science. And then again when she's twenty and is stolen. And then finally when she meets her brother, and in some sense starts over as a person (that is, she starts out a life in which she is a person rather than an object). Although...that may be a super-broad definition of starting over. But it's interesting to think about points at which characters have rebooted their lives, so to speak.

Seth does this...kind of. He HAS to, because he's discharged from the military and is no longer allowed to be a pilot, so he starts over career-wise...but significantly, he does not start over psychologically until much later. Jack (...it's a tentative name...too many people have names that start with J, argh!) starts over--he also leaves a military career and restarts (he leaves a fairly good rank for a low-level iob, too) to impress a girl. ...although that kind of cracks me up because technically he's an alternate-universe double of Jonathan, who would never do something like that. *laughs*

Insane Deathnote AU Light does this as well...sort of. He starts his life over after ceasing to be Kira. ...well ceasing to be possessed by Kira, ...don't judge me!  *laughs* No but yeah. Anyway. Liert does this. His home and everyone he knows is destroyed, so he starts over with the knights...and then decides to scrap that and start over as a rebel. Although that may be more switching allegiances than starting over. Interestingly, Ray does NOT do this, or at least I don't see her as doing this. She does totally alter her life; she goes from being an aristocrat to leading a guerilla army. But she is taking her father's place, so I see her as continuing his work rather than starting over in her life. And her ideals remain the same. An important part of her character is that she stays true to her initial ideals and values, and does manage to win freedom for her people through them.

Leitan does this...dramatically. He starts over living with Dark Dragon after destroying his original life--that is, his hometown and everyone who lived there--in a massive explosion. So, yeah...that's...a clean start, I guess...and then he starts over again when he leaves, although that is far less successful. In joining Dark Dragon, he also managed to psychologically start over and develop as a person; in leaving, he didn't so much start over as go back to his original life.

Jark is TRYING to start over in becoming a mercenary, but is wildly unsuccessful; he's still miserable. Ephraim is forced to start over in a new country after fleeing his homeland. I'm cold and it's windy outside.

Some of the people trying to cause the destruction of the world in Roninshaverse believe that it will lead to a Starting Over for the entire world--after everything that exists is destroyed, a new reality will be born that is much better. Unfortunately, they are wrong. It's possible that a new reality would be created, but more likely that the result would be eternal nonexistence. Luckily they fail anyway.

Actually, this is a pretty popular trope in fiction...the idea of the hero character beginning afresh, erasing former mistakes, rebirth...lots of classic themes there. Or The Atoner, who is trying to start a new, better life and make up for the old one. Or even the wish to change first impressions--to 'start over' in a relationship. Mmm...good prompt. Like this prompt. Not that I have anything to write for it, but I like it!  *laughs*

Although...my immediate thought on reading the prompt was 'oh man that is like Sarx's life story'. *laughs* In fact, the one piece of writing I have of him (last year's nano novel) is a story about him trying to start over...and failing miserably. The third person he abandons (but the fourth life/identity he abandons; he didn't abandon any specific person the first time)--Rasha. Actually, the climax of the story is his decision to leave. Although that might not be starting over so much as returning to what he was trying to start over FROM...but in some ways he DOES start over, at least in terms of his identity...although he's also inheriting a role...err...it's a complicated change?  *laughs*  But he was my first thought. And then the end of his main character arc is his decision to return to his origin and rebuild himself as a person who is all of the people he was before. He ends up Choosing a Third Option and staying as a member of both worlds. Although, he continues to be a character in stuff after that...just not the main character of anything. Well, his story is stable after that; he doesn't have a major, novel-worthy change to go through. But he's connected to several other characters--notably Svyrnn and both sets of detectives. So he's still there, just not the focus character.

But...thinking about it...Seth fits this one pretty well too. Although in his case, others wanted him to start over; he wanted to quit entirely (quit life, that is. He got through that, though). Many of his personality problems spring from a desire to NOT start over--he wants to avoid forming any new relationships with anyone, because in his mind, his life has already stopped. He eventually gets away from that a little and starts living his life again...a little. And he is also forced to start over in his profession: he was a pilot, trained to be one from a very young age, but is now unable/not allowed to be a pilot again, so he has to completely restart after having had a fairly high rank as a pilot. So he becomes a low-level comm officer for a crappy newbie mercenary crew. ...although...most of the members are like this...XD None of them were originally mercenaries, now that I think about it...well, they ARE on a government contract, so it makes sense that they all worked for the government. Plus their leader who recruited them all only new military people, so that's who he hired. *laughs* Not all of them are explicitly starting over, though. Gary is there because he got roped into it, W-guy-whose-name-I-keep-forgetting was in semi-retirement and came because it looked interesting, and Zuzu...still working on her backstory. she's some kind of assassin. I think. Maybe?  Yeah, it's a little vague. Kara is starting over...Jake...nooooot sure yet. He's a pilot, but what KIND of pilot is not totally clear. Not sure if he's actually military. He MIGHT be...but not sure. It might make sense if he wasn't military, though. Because he hates Seth. A lot. Initially because Seth was in a particular military division that he dislikes. But he might also just hate people who are military (although that might not make sense because nearly everyone on the ship is former military personal. At least 4 out of 7, and Gary partially counts too). But anyway, his backstory is also somewhat vague.

...I seem to have a lot of these vague 'group of characters!  They do profession!' things going on with no plots...I have the detectives (although they have a plot. Well, a plot and parts of another), and now these mercenaries. Who live in a sci-fi world!  With spaceships!  And they pilot flying robot things!  ...yeah it seemed like a good idea at the time. But I actually really like the characters. They're...kind of hilarious. And they fall between the detectives and the fantasy-mercenaries in terms of teamwork and/or depressing-ness. They dislike each other (or at least some of them do), but not as much as the other mercenaries, and although their backstories are generally more depressing than the detectives, they aren't nearly as depressing as the other mercenaries. It's mostly Seth who brings everyone else down in their depressing-ness score. The others have backstories that are not super-happy, but aren't as downright depressing as Seth's. *laughs* Plus Jack (I REALLY need to not name him that before it's too late and I get used to it, a guy named Jake and a guy named Jack are too confusing together...and Jake has been named for a while) is actually much less serious than either Jonathan or Jark. He kind of cracks me up because he's basically a guy who went into the military because, well, his father was military so it's expected, did well, met this girl, she's anti-military, so he decides, you know, I'll form a mercenary team!  Except he works as a government-contract team, so he's still technically government, so the girl is still like no. So now he's stuck with these nutcases he picked to work for him. And at least a few of them have backgrounds that are either too classified for him to know about or that they're keeping secret--Seth and W-guy were both Black Ops, Zuzu is some kind of assassin, and Gary did classified stuff. So...of the six people who work for him...two-thirds are keeping important, job-relevant information from him. And he THINKS they aren't. This is especially bad with Seth, who also has classified medical records that their team medic doesn't know about...and who is very injury-prone. Although the main thing they need to know is not on the records either (that he has post-traumatic stress disorder and thus should not be allowed to fly a spaceship with rockets and stuff because that would be dangerous). So they get into a situation where Kara is injured and they need a second pilot, and Seth is the only other qualified pilot there (Jack, Kara, Jake, and W-guy (and Seth too, forgot him) are all qualified pilots, but what they were trying to do was rescue Jack and W-guy, so they were down to Jake and Kara, and Kara was injured...and they needed at least two for the mission. Seth is actually a comm guy, not one of their pilots). And she (their medic) knows of no reason why this would be a bad idea. Jack is a little upset later when he discovers that a guy with piloting-related post-traumatic stress disorder who is in fact not qualified to fly on medical grounds was assigned to shoot rockets at him. ...well, NEAR him, but it ends up being more like at him. He's also upset that W-guy KNEW this, and Gary suspected...and neither of them bothered informing the guy in charge. Poor Jack. He has a crappy job. And yet...he himself created their group, so he only has himself to blame. Plus the girl he's trying to impress is SO NOT IMPRESSED. So...I find it mildly hilarious. XD ...huh, the only universe where Jonathan DOESN'T end up as someone's straight man is where he's a depressed nutjob who technically enslaves someone. ...huh. That's...kinda weird. I guess.

So yeah anyway, noticed that prompt earlier--looks pretty cool! Also I kinda need a shower right now. But sleep first. Shower tomorrow.

I'm trying to think if there are any ReEragon characters I think of as having important 'starting over' plots...my first thought was Eragon, but on second thought he doesn't really. He's thrust into a NEW life, but it isn't a restart. Well, he doesn't WANT it to be. He's running away from an enemy, not trying to start over in life. Brom is more an atoner...Murtagh maybe, but he falls under atoner as well, and he also wants to uncover the truth about bits of his life rather than just create a new one instead. Arya not at all (although in ReEldest she does make a major break with her old life; but it isn't a restart per se). Durza sort of...most of his life is about revenge, though, so he's more obsessed with the past. He does start over in some sense in that he leaves his original job in the Empire to start over in the Varden, but it's not really an internal restart--it's still connected to the initial revenge. Nasuada not at all either, and Saphira not at all because she's just beginning her life anyway. So not really at all...huh. Now that I think about it...quite a number of the ReEragon characters have revenge/atonement plots...they tend to obsess over the past rather than flee it. Well...I think of Inheritance canon as having a strong theme of 'the circumstances of your birth determine your life' and kind of the feeling that everything is about the past, so maybe that's not surprising? It's a story that is very much about the past. All Galby's evilness is about what he did 100 years ago, there's so many ancient people, Eragon is now part of the ancient order of the Riders...I think Paolini has said the story involves the younger generation taking over from the old, but...looking at the FEEL of the story...even though the characters take over from older people (Nasuada inherits the Varden, Eragon and Murtagh sort of replace Brom and Morzan, Orik takes over the dwarves, etc.)...I think it doesn't come off as them bringing anything new or making changes. They're a repeat--look at how Eragon and Murtagh are Brom and Morzan version two. Pretty much all of the major story elements are about the past--past wars, past grudges, past relationships. I can't think of much that ISN'T just a fulfillment/repeat of the past. Really, the plot seems more about the ancient past returning than about a new generation. It's about the RETURN of the dragon riders, the continuation of this really long war...not much new at all. So I kind of see Inheritance as a story that is concerned with the past. So...maybe that's why a number of the characters have plot arcs based in their pasts. Although...in ReEragon maybe it ends up being more 'overcoming the past' or 'not repeating the past'.

But anyway. I should stop staying up so late. I feel not very tired at all right now, which is bad because that suggests that my sleep cycle is awry...at 3am I SHOULD be tired, because normally I'm asleep. Need to get back into a good pattern. But part of the problem is...in the morning I just want to sleep, because if I get up I have nowhere to go and not much to do. I guess I feel a little cooped up, so I sleep a lot during the day because I have nothing to get up for, but then I stay up at night because I'm not tired...nnngh, I should be writing during the day, I know...but...I'm in that zone where I feel kind of listless....ahhhh, I'll work on it...I swear...I gotta think about what the dwarves' secret plot is. At the beginning of ReEldest, there's a short plot segment where a faction of the dwarves is plotting to kill Saphira because they aren't fans of dragons and think another dragon rider is too dangerous. But Orik ends up revealing the plot to Eragon and Saphira because he feels like, y'know, murdering people is wrong. So they circumvent it. But I need to establish the plot. I mean it's an assassination plot, but I need to establish the details. hmmm...would they try to kill Eragon too? Hmm...maybe. Although...it might be interesting to have it be only Saphira who they care about, because to the dwarves, Saphira is dangerous one--without her, Eragon is just some human. Well, he'd still have magic. But he's not very strong yet, so it would make sense for them to ignore him. But anyway I need to work on the details for that. My thought is...if they somehow tried to lure the others away from Saphira or lure her away from them?  Is that a pretty standard assassination thing? They presumably want it to look like...I don't know...not a murder?  Or maybe they don't care?  And how does Orik find out? Rumor and/or overhearing, or did they try to get him in on it?  Well...I need to look up what his original thing was with dragons, I think maybe I had him not like them, so this could be a turning point for him--on one level he agrees with them that dragons are too dangerous, but he has also met Saphira and Eragon and sees them as people so he can't condone the murder. That could work, I guess. Yeah...I need to work on the details for that...see, I have a plot skeleton thingy, but...it needs some...fleshing out. Well, obviously, but...I worry...^_^;;;;

Why do I only think about this at such an hour...?  I should think about these things during the day...

Guess who's actually awake this time!

2010-01-02T00:03:48Z

Oh yeah, sleep is good...ahhh, I feel reasonably awake.

Although...it's cold and snowy out, and there's nowhere within walking distance of my house anyway, so...I feel kinda cooped up...I'm not athletic, but I actually like having space to walk around. I tend to pace and wander around and stuff. Not that I walk very fast, or for very long. I tend to get an idea, and walk around thinking about it, then get bored and sit down to read or whatever, then get up and walk again...I probably look like I have a low attention span...well...that may be true. *laughs* But anyway, I like having space to roam. And in a house, with other people also in the house...not much roaming space. So I end up just sitting around internetting or playing video games or reading, so I feel sluggish...winter is a sedentary time for me...well, it's being at home, too...at school, even once it got cold and snowed, I still went outside pretty often...it's kind of hilarious because when I'm walking around I'm usually thinking about other stuff, and frequently am planning scenes/plots in my head, so I tend to speed up my walk when it's an action scene...so sometimes I'm just walking down a hall and thinking about a chase scene, so I randomly break out into a run...to me it makes sense, but to an observer I'm just running for no apparent reason, in places where you shouldn't run, like crowded hallways and dining halls. So much of what I do makes sense only to me. *laughs* But that's why I like having space. Thinking of an action sequence while sitting still is harder.

So I figured I'd try to get all the heart pieces. I've only got two to go, but...they're hard ones...*cries*  The Gerudo horseback archery one...ahhh, I'm pretty bad at the stuff where aim is required...I always move the joystick too hard and go too far and miss the target...and the Dampe race. I think you just use the longshot at the end, but I need to find the spot to aim at. the others I mostly just picked up while doing other stuff because they were all in the walkthrough I was using, so these last few are the only times I've had to go out of my way to get them. And then...the last half of the Spirit Temple. So I'm almost done with the game. This is like...the first time I've actually won a Zelda game in forever. I think I beat Link's Awakening one time, but...that's it...I don't beat many video games...well, I beat all my Pokemon games. But those are less timing-oriented. Stuff with precise timing, I have trouble with. And also...I avoided some dungeons as a kid because they're creepy...*laughs*

The ReDead and Gibdo are SO CREEPY. Man, if I get frozen by mistake I kind of actually flip out and start frantically smashing the buttons to get free and start swearing and stuff. *laughs* Also the Shadow Temple and the Bottom of the Well...so...creepy and gross...aaaaaugh...no seriously they are SO CREEPY. How distressing~~~ They're also annoying dungeons because of all the Eye of Truth parts--invisible enemies and pitfalls, stuff like that. Plus the Hoverboots are annoying to use, they don't really work well. Bleh. Whatever. The music at the Gerudo fortress...SO AWESOME. Love that music. Although...it makes me want to just hang around there and not finish the stuff I was doing when I entered that area...*laughs* The Zelda games in general have good music. There's great music in Link's Awakening, too...it's an old Gameboy game. One of the pre-color ones. Really good game.

Yeah...I haven't really been doing anything but playing video games...*laughs*  Ahhh, I feel bad...I'm gonna work on ReEldest...I swear...

I'm not even sure why I have this writer's block about it. Maybe because I didn't work on it for a while?  I might've just lost the momentum. Gotta get back in the game!  Also...it starts with Dwarfland, and...I find it hard to write things that happen in a building with a large population. Scenes between two or three characters are my strongest...crowd scenes are really hard!  It's something I need to improve at...^_^;;;; Plus writing Eragon is actually really hard. I feel like he ended having a somewhat generic personality. Well...most of the other characters, I extrapolated from their canon backstories (none of them are heavily characterized, but most of them have some kind of indicated backstory). But Eragon...his backstory is...I don't know...nothing definitive happens in it. That is, a lot of characters I've written are shaped by one or more important events that happened in their lives. Lots of classic character themes are like that--revenge, finding a lost person or thing, gaining someone's respect, whatever. And anyway most characters have some goals. But Eragon...he's such a blank slate at the start of Eragon. ...man, writing about title characters is hard because it gets confusing since I'm too lazy to underline or italicize the title. But whatever. So anyway, at the start of the book he's so blank!  We know that he's TEH MASTER or whatever at hunting, he has an uncle and a cousin, and Sloan doesn't like him for no apparent reason. And that is EVERYTHING WE KNOW. And...well, we never really find out any more. Eragon starts with nothing, and all characterization pretty much comes from what happened later. He has no starting stats, almost. When he learns about dwarf religion, he remembers nothing of any spiritual experiences or traditions from his life. When he attends dwarf and elf festivals, he never thinks back on celebrations from his youth. Nothing ever reminds him of his old life. He rarely thinks about it at all. even when he and Roran are in the same scene, he doesn't act any different than any other time. It's like Roran is just one more person he met on his journey. Everything Eragon believes or thinks or cares about...for the most part it's stuff he learned or was told on his journey. There's nothing from before. It's like he has no existence prior to the first chapter of the book. He just has no backstory!

The other characters mostly do. They also have personal goals. Well, Saphira has no backstory, since we see her get born during the story, but she's kind of weird anyway. But anyway--Arya has a backstory. She has her...issues with her family?  There's something like that in the book. In Eldest. Like she got a tattoo and her mother was all angry. ...I mean, it wasn't a large or complex backstory, but she has SOMETHING. She has relationships, values, and memories from the past. And during the books, we see her refer back to her prior life--she talks about hanging out with Faolin, about...I don't know, once or twice she talks about stuff. I'm not saying it's literary gold here, but there's SOMETHING. She has a clear origin. Things happened to her prior to the prologue of the book. Or Murtagh--he has a backstory. He lived with like Evil Dad and shit and then he ran away. Important things have previously happened to him, and they continue to influence his character. Nasuada grew up with the Varden (...didn't she?  Well at the very least I think she arrived as a baby. I don't quite recall), her dad died and now she's in charge--part of her character is 'wants to help the Varden', which makes sense because of how she's spent her whole life with them. There's something there. Durza...he has about three characteristics in canon (he's evil, he's stupid, and he's arrogant. So, pretty typical mini-boss for a video game), but he DOES have a backstory. He was a guy whose mentor died so he summoned evil spirits and got possessed. there's something to work with. Brom has a backstory--he was all pals with Morzan but then he had a kid with Morzan's wife and he stole from the King and stuff. Also he's Eragon's father. Apparently Brom was a playah. ...okay so anyway. My point is, the Inheritance characters are not strongly characterized; their characterizations are often fairly simple, or they aren't very consistent, or they're just very flat. But they do have backstories. Sometimes the backstories don't completely make sense, or aren't well explained or adequately explored, but they have them.

The point of a backstory is...well, the thing is that a real person has this whole life. A story starts at some defined point. The moment that's going on on the first page. But in most stories, we don't meet characters at their birth and then see every event of their life thereafter (although you could, but other characters would still have backstories). We meet a character, and gradually get to know them. We meet Eragon when he's...15, right? Yeah. So there are 15 years of his life that have happened before the story. And to a real person, those 15 years have been meaningful (for most people, anyway). Stuff has happened, emotions have been felt, bonds have been formed, lessons learned--whatever. SOMETHING happened during that time. We as the readers may never learn all of it, but presumably his life has had an influence on who he is today.

But Eragon just...he ends up looking like a blank slate. Nothing important has ever happened to him. His whole life is about this quest. Yeah, he has the vengeance thing going on, but he never seems to care that much about it. He SAYS that, but he rarely thinks about it and it is not really that important to the books. In Brisingr, Eragon finally gets revenge. He kills the Razac. Based on what we're TOLD, this should have been a pretty epic moment. All the anger and sorrow of the last...well, according to the summary at the start of the book, it's been like a month I think, but it can't possibly, and the timeline isn't that great, and anyway. All the anger and sorrow of the last two books is coming to a head, this is a turbulent, tense moment, Eragon should be thinking of his Uncle and what it was like, finding his body, knowing he was too late to save the man who was like his father, and now the murderers must pay...except it ISN'T. It's not tense. Eragon and Roran sit around comparing scars, there's a mountain of purple prose in addition to the Evil Mountain, they go inside and fight...and it's not tense or emotional. It doesn't feel victorious or vengeful. It doesn't feel like anything. All of the Inheritance trilogy has this problem--the writing does not effectively convey emotion. So even though we're TOLD that the characters are angry or sad or whatever, nothing in their behavior seems to suggest that. This is especially true of Eragon--the books are mostly from his perspective, so we are always hearing his inner thoughts...and those thoughts are just not very emotional. Roran's sections sometimes get emotion in there--but he ends up coming off as a bit of Determinator--his main emotion is INTENSE DETERMINATION. At least that's what I remember from Eldest. But it's still better than Eragon, who just...rarely seems emotional at all. It's kind of creepy. Nasuada occasionally seems emotional, although she mostly seems annoyed. Like all the time. It's kinda weird. But anyway.

Eragon is just this guy who does stuff. His journey is everything there is to him. He never seems to have any deeper levels.

All the other characters--I based their ReEragon characters on mostly tweaked versions of their canon backstories. I didn't take much from their canon characterizations, but I tried to extrapolate from their backstories. I expanded and changed stuff in the backstories, but those were the starting points. Except Eragon...has no backstory. And very little characterization. So I just didn't know what to DO with him. So he ended up being a bit of a generic 'innocent hero' type. I mostly tried to work with him as...blank-stale-ish in knowledge. Like, he's very curious (we're told in canon that he is) but knows little of the world, and he's innocent and cheerful but has been thrust into a terrible situation. But I don't have as much of a feel for him as for most of the other characters. With characters...when I write them well, usually I kind of have a...a feel for them?  Like I feel like 'yeah, it's like THAT, that's what he'd do...'. With Eragon I'm like 'so...you're...like this?  I guess?' He feels a bit empty. So he's annoying to write. I expected Murtagh to be interesting to write, because he seems more interesting than the other characters in canon. But it seems that may be because he's the 'mysterious guy' and is allowed to disagree with Eragon. So...his backstory is largely still mysterious, and again, there isn't a lot there. I have a backstory for him, I have his motivations and stuff, but somehow it's very hard to get into his head, so to speak. He and Eragon have the same issue there--I know about them, but I just don't 'get' them somehow.

Which is weird--I expected Murtagh to be much easier to write than Eragon. Well, he's somewhat easier to write...I guess. I have no idea what it is that makes him hard to write. Part of the problem may be that his background is as like...a kid of an aristocratic-ish military family. Like, in canon he apparently lived at court. And I just am totally lost trying to figure out what that would be like. Political stuff = ultra confusing to me. Even real-life politics confuses me!  ^_^;;; That's why very few of my characters are high-ranking. I have no idea how organizations work or are structured, so...I avoid writing about them if I can. I have this problem with Ray, too...she's an aristocrat AND sort of leading an army. NO IDEA how that works. Or what you do to overthrow a government and stuff. I had a friend try to explain this to me and I still don't get it. It's...confusing...^_^;;;

But anyway, yeah, starting with Eragon and Murtagh...I actually like them as characters, I just find them difficult to write. Plus, with Saphira with them there are three main characters together at once. As the number of characters together goes up, it gets harder to write them...especially having them talk. especially with Eragon and Saphira!  Writing characters with any kind of special bond or link is tricky. With any sufficiently large group of people, I think people tend to split into subgroups...that is, pairs or trios of people will be talking together in the larger group of 10 or 15 or however many people. In any large group that isn't some kind of formal group but is just people hanging out, otherwise there would be too many interruptions and stuff.

But it's awkward on the page, because either you have to split the narrative focus, or some characters are just really quiet all of a sudden. It's also hard because if they aren't talking, I sometimes forget to mention that they're still standing there...in a visual medium, you can always see whoever's in the scene, so they don't have that feeling of vanishing...anyway, writing large groups...I'm bad at it.

ReEldest is basically about large organizations and buildings, though. ...that sounds weird, but...it's about the Varden and the elves, and then there's a whole thing inside Galbatorix's castle, so most of this story happens with large groups of people making political and administrative decisions inside complex buildings. All of my weaknesses at once!  *laughs* Writing people on a vague journey is easier...*laughs*

But I am going to work on it...I swear. Seriously. Although...I wonder how long this will end up being?  I did write a summary, but I'm not sure how that'll translate into pages.

I regret putting Angela in ReEragon...she's a semi-major character in canon, so I figured she should be in there, but on closer examination...she doesn't really DO anything. You can take her out of the book without really affecting the plot at all. So...I don't have anything for her to do either. And Elva--should've taken Elva out. She actually is plot-important, but the problem is that I changed the plot enough from canon that everything she does in canon...doesn't make sense for her to do here. I have an actual plot-relevant role for her, but...I don't really need her. She's plot-relevant, but the scene could happen very easily without her. But I felt like, since she's fairly important in canon, I should put her in. Oh well. Angela basically disappears, though...I just...ignored her, pretty much...*laughs* Elva does stuff. I kept meaning to have her die, but I can't think of a way HOW. I altered her powers, so...she can't die of some kind of 'absorbing too much pain' or whatever. In canon her power is...it's not totally clear, but I think the idea is that she is compelled to stop others from getting hurt. But it ends up functioning as psychic powers. So I was thinking...she could accurately perceive people's intentions. Like...lie detector? There are some spies in ReEldest, so...useful-ish. She really has no purpose though. I just put her in because she existed in canon. ^_^;;; Mistaaaake. (and yet, I felt no need to do this with the plot...*laughs*) If the plot was a little larger, so to speak, I feel like I could find room for an Elva subplot...but the ReEldest plot ended up being somewhat small. If that's the right word. That is, there isn't a lot of room to stick stuff in between the events that happen. Well...there's space, but...for her to do anything, I'd just be finding something for her to do that isn't really at all necessary to the story. Which would be bad. Man, she's like an unlockable bonus character in a videogame, they have to make it so you can finish the game without them so they might not actually be relevant to the plot.

So yeah, Elva...such a waste...she does do one thing, but that's it. I mean I don't even need to have her do that, but I probably will just so she has some purpose for existing. Aaagh, why did I put her in....?  -__-;;;

Also, although I have a reasonably detailed summary...it was mostly written so I'd have a correct timeline and make sure the characters ended up in the right locations at the right times. So it has bits like 'and the there's a secret plot' with no details about the plot. ...political intrigue...I'm bad at it...*laughs*  Ahhh...well...I'll try my best?  Probably shouldn't have started with a secret plot...

Although...I should check again and make sure the timeline works. Depends on how long they stay in each place, but...I feel like while Eragon is training, no one else is doing very much. Maybe that isn't that strange--there's no reason for the Varden to get attacked during that time and they have no actions to take. But...hopefully that won't be weird...well, there'll be four main characters active in the plot at that point, so it's not like it'll feel empty...hmmm...I feel like the plot makes sense at this point, and the order of events is correct for the outcome...I just...wonder if I have the skill to actually write it well...*laughs*  Oh well...nnngh...need to regain my writing rythm...I don't know how to spell that word. I spell it wrong mostly. And I can't figure it out...but anyway...

Also I'm upgrading to Windows 7!  Kori and Catherine got it, and it looks really good and they really like it. Plus there's a student discount offer until January 3rd, so that's good. And since I have Vista already, I can do an in-place installation--apparently it keeps your files and programs as-is and upgrades the OS. So I don't have to do a clean install (I did a backup anyway, just in case, of course). The file is almost done downloading...it's been downloading for about 24 hours now, but it's 83% done...it isn't frozen or anything, just...slow. *laughs* But once it's all downloaded, I'll run, aaaaand...upgrade!  Yaaay! So, hopefully that'll go well.

Aaand...that's everything. My life for the last few weeks has been...eat, sleep, video games. Basically. ...that's...a little sad...^_^;;; Oh well. Must...get motivated to write....ahhhh, my writing mojo...it's not there...*cries*  I'm actually a very bad writer, because I get in moods where I just can't get myself to write a line. Well, I can write long-winded lj posts obviously, but I mean in terms of fiction. I just stare at a blank page. And if I DO write anything, it's...well, not very good at all. I go through 'shitty writing' phases. Very sad...ahhh...I wish I was the type who could just write at any time...are most people like that?  Or is it more common to get stuck a lot? I don't really know, actually...but I feel like I'm also lazy, so I tend not to write sometimes...although, I'm actually always thinking of stories. I'm just not writing them. Also I tend to think of scenes rather than whole stories, so my writing process has this big gap where I have to jump from 'images and some small sections of plot in my head' to 'a written story that has a linear plot'. It's a biiiig jump sometimes...that's why I can usually write a short piece quickly if I get an idea for it--they're just scenes, so the gap is small. But for a long story....the gap is big...*laughs*

Nnngh...need a food. Man I have eaten TOO MANY COOKIES today. But they're good...*laughs*

So yeah I have basically been vegetating for weeks. The shocking truth...although...it's actually not shocking at all, because I do this pretty much every time I'm home...^_^;;;

Why do ideas come at this hour of the morning...?

2009-12-31T08:18:02Z

Lately, at night...I start reading something--I usually read before going to bed--and then it gets interesting, and I think, one more page...and then it's hours later...and I'm tired, but there are all kinds of things to think about...ahhhh, this is becoming a problem...it's not even insomnia, it's me staying up to read things when I actually do want to sleep at the same time...^_^;;;

Anyway, had two thoughts, know I will forget them by tomorrow. Anti-fandom and author vs. reader ownership. Was reading about the latter, thought about the former for some reason.

Anti-fandom. Well, that's kind of broad, but anyway, Complaining About Shows You Don't Like (it's a trope! ILU tvtropes~~~). I actually generally do this only when forced to view/read/whatever the thing I don't like. No really. I know, you'd think I'm the type to complain about anything, but seriously, I am SO MUCH MORE LIKELY to talk your ear off by explaining in far too much detail the plot of something I DO like. My brother does this too. We're terrible that way, we'll talk your ear off, honestly. Also I'm tired right now and this will feel much less coherent if I read it again tomorrow BUT ANYWAY.

So anyway, in spite of this, I actually devote a fair amount of time to Inheritance-related writing/thinking. And the story of this is kind of...odd. See, I had a friend who liked the book and my brother bought it, so I read it one summer. And it was SO BORING. Not even boring in the excruciating way where you can't bear to keep reading--boring in the mindless way. Mindless is a better word. I read it and couldn't remember a thing that had happened in the book. It was like reading blank pages. So I was like 'oh. okay, whatever' and promptly forgot about it. Because it was so dull I didn't even dislike it. It was like this large blue object that didn't really do anything useful, but wasn't especially objectionable because I had enough space to just shove it under my bed with my sneakers. So that was that.

EXCEPT I then discovered, months later, that many people dislike this book!  So I was like 'oh. I think I read that?  Didn't I?' I was like 'wow, I just thought it was boring'. It was so MEH. Except, upon reading it more closely (and thus actually retaining the details), I realized...it actually is a bad book. Man, it was so bad I didn't notice that, you know?  Not that I enjoyed it--I didn't. It was like a non-experience. That is a truly special quality of writing right there. Writing SO POINTLESS, you don't even notice that you're reading it. But anyway, the thing is, I love writing and reading and analyzing. Even as a writer, I love all three parts of the creative process (...as I see it, anyway...): first you have an idea. Then you write the idea. Then you (or at least I) analyze it and write ABOUT it and whatnot. I love all of those parts. They're all awesome. And I like this in books too--I love reading them. I love writing fanfic (for some books. Not all). And I love talking/writing/thinking ABOUT books/stories. I love analyzing!  There are many books I enjoy. but the ones I talk about on and on and on and write about and etc. and really feel an affection for rather than just enjoying them are ones that I analyze. That is a very affectionate process for me (...sort of?  Well, for books I love best, the analysis is part of the book-love). So, in anti-fandom, Inheritance was possible to analyze. As a book, it was...well...dull. But as a BAD book, it was analyzable! So, although Brisingr is in my opinion a bad story badly written, I did enjoy reading it. It was amusing in that weird way where you're totally cracking up and you aren't meant to be. Totally amusing. A big brick to lug around, but amusing. Worth finding space in my bag for. But not as a book--only as a BAD book. If it was better written, it might well veer back into Utterly Mindless and Dull territory. There's just nothing there to analyze if it didn't have all these flaws. But those are interesting to analyze. Also it's lulzy. And then there's fanfic!  ...which maaaay be the real reason I have some affection for Inheritance. Because a personal canon exists for it. XD But anyway, as bad books, I find Eragon and Brisingr both enjoyable to read and analyze and be amused by. I don't like them in the way I like books I would say are good books. It's a very different book relationship. But still--on some level, I enjoy them. Why would I devote time to something I don't like or that didn't benefit me in some way?  (I mean, I devote time to like...exams, and I hate them. But they benefit me in some way. That is, in the way where I don't auto-fail a course. Alas...)

Recently I've been rereading bits of Eldest, for ReEldest-research purposes (well...research?  Do you call it that?  Anyway). And the weird thing is, I STILL don't like it. I didn't like Eldest when I first read it. And I still don't like it now. And yet, Brisingr is enjoyable and amusing.

I think Brisingr is better written. Not well written--it reeeeally isn't--but better than Eldest. The prose...either it's not as bad or it's not as noticeable. Part of the problem with Eldest is that nothing happens, so it's just these heaps of ugly prose to slog through with no payoff and no distraction from the badness. In Brisingr, STUPID things are happening, but at least they happen. Well, occasionally. There are still long, long sequences of nothing, but the thing is that eventually all the nothing turns into some kind of action. Which lets me, as a reader, focus on the story rather than the miserable prose. The story isn't good either, but it's hilariously bad rather than just irritating. Bad prose alone isn't that funny to me. Idiotic story can be hilarious, though.

So, I still can't stand Eldest. But somehow it's even WORSE now, because now there's this separate ReEragon thing in my head, you know?  So aside from canon-Eragon, there's also Eragon-in-my-head (...that...sounds odd now that I think about it...*laughs*). So I'll read a scene and be like NOOOOO DON'T DO THAAAAT because I know how I would prefer to write it and how I would prefer to read it. Whereas before it was just like 'man, all these characters are IDIOTS', now it's like 'NUUUUU GUYS DOOOOON'T' because I actually LIKE them. Well, not canon-them, but my versions of them. Of course I like them, I wrote them. I get attached to characters I write...*laughs*  I've occasionally started liking a character only after writing them. Well, that happpened here too, sort of...but anyway.

So there are ALL THESE SCENES in Eldest where I'm like NUUUUU GAAAAIZ, but since the ReEldest plot is totally divorced from canon it's not like I'm doing anything with those scenes anyway. What I need is mostly the setting. I'm weak on settings and I do want to use the canon setting (mostly). So for example, if I want to write Dwarf Mountain (...not Tronjheim, the other dwarf place thingy. ...I'll look up the name when I write it...^_^;;;), I need a layout. But I SUCK at doing internal layouts of buildings and cities and stuff. I usually steal from preexisting buildings. One reason writing my first year nano, Precious Things, was easy was because all the buildings were places I've been. The schools were my middle school and high school. The houses were versions of my house. I have trouble picturing layouts of rooms and stuff (well, not an individual room I guess, if it's just a square one, but a whole building)--where the stairs go, which rooms are where. But I know where everything in my house is. So I had an easy time with that--saying so-and-so went down the stairs and goes into the kitchen and sits down at the table or whatever. Normally, writing a character walking through a building is very hard. It ends up just being a simple 'he went down the hall to the room' type thing--any description feels tacked on because I don't 'see' that, really. But describing MY house--easy. I have trouble remembering real-life building layouts too, and directions to places...but a familiar building like my house, I can remember (and easily check for the reference, of course). So, here, it's useful to me to check the canon layouts.

But there kind of...aren't any. With all that endless prose, the buildings are described...kind of. There's lots of decoration--but no real idea of what these places look like or where anything IS. The size of things, how many people live there...totally unclear to me from reading it. At first, trying to remember layouts, I thought, well, all that prose--maybe I skipped over it, forgot it. But even with close reading, I can't FIND it. So it's...yeah...

Settings are hard for me. Not worlds or whatever, like the people that go in them and stuff--but just architecture. Urban planning. Where stuff goes. I have trouble figuring out the layout, and then I have trouble describing it. A person, I don't have as much trouble describing, but a room...what goes in it?  Where does it go? I can describe an actual room, but I have trouble making up a room and filling it with things in my mind. That's why when I write someone in a room...it's usually not described much, but when I imagine it...the rooms are super-empty. Really bare. I don't describe it because I don't think of it.

I have other problems with visualizing rooms--for example, a mental tic/compulsion I've had for years with some types of furniture. I'll be trying to picture a scene, right?  And in the scene there's a table or a chair. With legs. And then I get into this thing where in my mental picture, the legs expand infinitely and become taller, and I have to reimagine the scene and fix the error, and it happens again, and the scene is disrupted and I can't work on it. It doesn't happen super-often--just sometimes. Maybe my mind gets tired?  I don't know. But anyway, I have problems visualizing details of settings. I can imagine a room I've been in fine--all the details. But I can't create one from my head, somehow. So when I describe buildings, they tend to be...confused. Or just tiny. Or vast but empty.

It's like...in imagining my characters, they feel very complete. Even for ones I haven't done much detail work on--there's this FEELING of completeness. Like, they aren't missing details, the details just aren't clear yet. Like this feeling of a person. They feel like they've been done right, I guess?  But my buildings...even when I imagine them, they feel totally un-building-like. They feel empty and incomplete in my head. I try to imagine further, but there's just nothing. anything the characters actually interact with, I'm mostly okay on--for example, I have bits of character's houses. Alan's apartment has a broken window. There was some scene where he had to fix it with duct tape, so the window, I have. Jonathan's house has this lamp (his wife knocks out an intruder with it at one point). Jared keeps an assault rifle under his mattress (unloaded, and disassembled). Izumi has shit hidden behind panels because her place used to be her crash pad. So, details for things they actually touch/use/interact with--those are generally there.

Stuff like...like do they have curtains?  Some of them must. Windows usually have those. It's not that I need to describe that in-text, but even in my head I don't imagine it. I don't usually even imagine the windows. All I imagine is the people. Some other stuff, sometimes, but it's patchy. It's like I only imagine settings on an as-need basis or something. Which is inconvenient, because I need non-transient settings or the building layouts get wildly inconsistent really easily. That's why my buildings are rarely at all specific--how far a room is, what's next to what...it's ultra-vague. I'm never sure if it makes sense--should A be farther from B?  Should C be upstairs, not downstairs?  With like a house it's not too terrible--stick bedrooms upstairs, kitchen and living room downstairs, that's house-ish. Apartment--I went to my aunt's apartment as a kid, it had a bedroom, kitchen area thingy, bathroom, main room. So that's my 'idea model' of an apartment, I guess. But other buildings are a mess. A school--I've been to a school, so I have that. If I ever wrote a university, it'd just be my university in layout, pretty much. Churches, I've been to those. But the majority of my characters aren't IN schools. They live in other places. Theaters, underground tunnels, police stations, corporate buildings, guerilla army hideouts...they end up in buildings I have zero knowledge of and am not really sure how to research. Even if I look at a diagram, it's useful to say where things are, but I have no inner idea of the place. The only buildings I mostly 'see' in my head are ones I've been to many, many times. My house is a complete image in my head. There are never bits missing when I imagine it. But most buildings I can imagine bits and pieces, maybe...but the idea is just incomplete. I don't know what it is.

Objects I've never seen, fictional objects--I can imagine them. Maybe not accurately, but there's something THERE. Buildings and settings are just this void. No details. Not even an outline. Can't picture it. So I always feel like my setting details are awful, so I say 'okay, I'll pay attention and remember to put them in this time!'...and I don't! I don't forget, exactly, they just...were never imagined in the first place. My writing process is 'get idea. imagine idea. write idea.', so...the idea exists in my head first. But the setting is usually not in my head. I have to plan that in a very intellectual way--get a blueprint or a picture of something, measure something. But it never FEELS like a setting. I have no...mental ownership, I guess?  There's just nothing there. With settings, I have to go back and check what I said went where. With characters--I almost never forget what the characters did or said. I generally don't need to look that up to have an idea what happened before. But settings...bleh.

So yeah...although lately I've mostly been playing video games. Ocarina of Time. Such a good game~~~~ Well...I use an online walkthrough...most of the puzzles would just...I totally would not be able to finish this game on my own.  Not even stuff like all the secret item locations and stuff--even the dungeons and basic puzzles. And I never did before. I always got lost and confused in dungeons. ...well...the maps and the layouts...ahhh, me and my buildings designs...I would forget which rooms I'd been in and which direction things were in. Even WITH the map and compass. Ahhh...me and my building problems...*laughs*

SO yeah the other thing was...ohhhh man it's...early and I'm tired...but anyway I was reading some stuff about ownership of artistic works. You know, a whole 'the creator is the owner' versus 'the reader/viewer/experiencer shares the ownership with the creator'. You know, like there's that quote from some critic (...my sources and citations are SO GREAT RIGHT...^_^;;;) that authors are the LEAST knowledgeable about their writing. The fan's interpretation is just as valid as the author's, etc.

And...man, that makes no sense to me at all. Not in any moral way or whatever, but in a logical way. Say I have a Picasso painting. Just imagine. And I paint a mustache on it. Well...yeah, I created that in some sense, but...that doesn't cause the original painting to be any different. I put a mustache on, but that doesn't mean the painting is 'painting with mustache'. I CHANGED it, but that means it is NOT what the original was. I didn't alter the reality that the painting didn't start with a mustache. Reality is still reality.

And I think most people would agree with that--the chain of events goes forward. And who knows, maybe with physics and stuff (also I am so scientific, for srs...*laughs*) time doesn't go forwards, I don't know. But given time as we understand it, and cause-and-effect as we generally understand it...what happens AFTER doesn't alter what happened BEFORE. The painting was ALTERED, but that implies there was an earlier, different state. That state may have been destroyed now, but the fact that it existed doesn't change.

Except apparently this gets nebulous with ideas. In writing, I've often seen the argument that 'if it isn't in the text, it doesn't exist'. So, for example, I write a book about Bob. In the book, Bob runs a grocery store. If I later say that in the book Bob actually worked on a farm, well, I am just plain wrong. Doesn't matter that I'm the author, that's just a factual contradiction. What I say NOW doesn't change what happened BEFORE. And that also seems quite obvious to me.

BUT. What if I never say what Bob does?  The book isn't about his career--it's about him on vacation or something. His career isn't mentioned. And for whatever reason, readers thought probably Bob worked at a grocery store. Maybe Bob knew a lot of grocery store workers and they just made an association. Maybe Bob made a daring escape when locked up in a grocery store because he had so much knowledge of grocery stores. Whatever. A reader tells me this, and I say 'oh, actually he works on a farm.' And the reader says 'no he doesn't, that's not in the book!'

And here there seems to be an issue?  That's how it seems, anyway. From what I read, this seems to be where people disagree. There's an argument that, well, I didn't SAY he was a farmer, so he WASN'T. That's just my interpretation, and the reader's interpretation is equally valid. There's also an argument that I, as the author, would be the best person to know what Bob's career is, so if I say he's a farmer, well, he's a farmer.

Sometimes I've seen a time distinction. That is, if I did not think about his profession while writing the book and LATER decide Bob was a farmer, that doesn't count, but if I knew he was a farmer the whole time I was writing the book (or perhaps even part of the time), it does count. And, man, how can you really know what a person was thinking?  This distinction seems...quite hard to work with, since it's hard to prove what someone was or wasn't thinking. But I think the idea is that...well...I guess everything the author was thinking when she wrote the book influenced it?  I guess?

Now, I have already said that if I write something down, I can't later say with any accuracy that I didn't write it down. What happened, happened. BUT. If I NEVER SAY Bob works on a farm...well...NOTHING happened. If I say it later, there's no contradiction. So...how do you decide whether Bob works on the farm?

Obvious answer: he doesn't exist and does not work on a farm because only people who exist can work on farms. and, well, yes. Fiction and all that.  BUT. Not a USEFUL answer, unless the answer is really 'it doesn't matter, why ask?' And then the counteranswer is 'it matters to the person who asked'. You might well ask why we read books at all--they're fiction, so don't they also not matter?  Maybe things matter--count as significant/meaningful--because they matter TO SOMEONE. That's a workable enough definition, I guess. Yeah, I know, arguments could be made that that's not true etc...but in this particular case, I think it's enough to say that if you're going to ask the question, probably the answer matters to you, so you won't be content with a 'it doesn't matter' answer. So what IS the answer?

Well...another answer might be 'there is no answer'. That is, if the text doesn't say his job, in some sense he has no job. That information doesn't exist and can be filled in with whatever the reader wants. But that doesn't seem to make sense to me. That is, obviously the reader will imagine any details that aren't given but which the reader wants to picture, but that doesn't make them true. If I write about Bob, and someone decides they want his name to be Andre, they can imagine it is, but it won't actually be true. Let's assume here that 'true' means 'accurate in the fictional world', I think that works and it gets away from the 'what is true? is fiction true?  false?' etc. issue which is not what I'm trying to talk about here also maybe this could have waited until morning/afternoon?  Because it's early and I'm tired. But anyway now that I've started...

Another answer is 'whatever the reader thinks is true for that reader--it's all interpretation'. That is, if you think he's a grocer, he is; if I think he's a farmer, then FOR ME, he is. The author's interpretation is the same as any other and has meaning only to those who choose to assign meaning to it. But...does that make sense?  It's kind of the same as the above. I mean, I can interpret that Bob is really an axe-murderer, but would it make any sense at all to say that in the story he actually is one?  That seems silly.

Another answer is 'the author is right because she made the story, so she would know, wouldn't she'? This makes the most sense to me...sort of. That is, if I flatly contradict an earlier statement, well, they can't BOTH be true. Maybe I've changed my mind--but what I WROTE doesn't change. I could write a new edition, a revised one, and change it, but the original version still exists. The new version doesn't erase it, it's just different. I may say it's more true to my own ideas and what I intended, and that might be perfectly accurate, but it doesn't mean the first version stops existing. Maybe some people like it better, and they can do that of course. Anyone can like whatever they want. However, at the same time, the fact that they prefer it doesn't make it the 'real one' or better or more true to some spirit or other. They're all versions. It is the FIRST version, but that doesn't necessarily make it the best or the most pure or whatever. I mean, man, I revise essays and stuff--my first drafts are NOT what I want considered as the 'real' version. It's still true in classes where you turn in a first draft and then revisions--the revisions are what you want to be seen as the 'real' version, not the earlier ones. So...just because it came first doesn't make it better or 'the truth' or whatever.

Mostly, I think this makes sense because of logic. Suppose I have thought about Bob being a farmer all along. If the fan says 'well he isn't really a farmer'...well, does that make sense?  I think it doesn't. Bob was created as a farmer. If you take Bob to be 'the fictional person created by me, the author' then Bob is, in fact, a farmer. He was ALWAYS a farmer. You just didn't know it. So, logically, the fact that you thought he was a grocer doesn't erase what already existed.

Now, as for the 'if it isn't in the book it doesn't exist' thing...what about sequels and stuff? Honestly, if you get into that, then book 1 is a different canon than book 1 and book 2 together, and most people don't do that unless they hate book 2, and then it ends up looking like it's just based on taste rather than on some overarching philosophical thing. It often seems like the argument is 'writing something down has magical properties that transforms it'. Because...the book existed before. In the author's head. The written version is just the last draft to this date. So...why does it exist now and not before?

And why do we get angry when people steal our ideas?  If I tell you about this great idea I had that I want to suggest at our staff meeting, and then at the meeting you say it first (and assuming that you did NOT have the idea before I told you--you had been totally surprised by my idea), well, most people would get angry in that situation. They'll feel their idea has been stolen. But...it wasn't written down. You just SAID it. It was just an idea. So...it seems like people do feel like they own their ideas.

Or...is it that once it's written down it stops being an idea and attains a separate existence? But it's made of ideas, so...man, I'm kind of too tired to explain this, but about an hour and a half ago I actually had something to say about this. Seriously I had this idea. Oh man, I think it was a good one too...alas...ahhh, I wasted all my hours of competent thinking talking about buildings!  Although...that wasn't very competent either...

But anyway. So, I think that it IS true that reading a book is a relationship between reader and text. The story you read is affected by your preconceptions. We filter everything we do and see and stuff through our own experience. So there is no one way to read a story. Each reader will feel differently about the story. But if we've all read the same book...there IS just one book. So maybe that's the reason we love text-as-everything. It's the only objective version of the story we have.

And if I intended to write Bob as a farmer, but in the story I actually write him as a grocer (by...mistake...?  The farmer example worked less well than I had hoped. Not subjective enough), well, I have just not done what I intended. If in the story Bob is in fact a grocer, then he is a grocer, even if I didn't MEAN for him to be. What is actually written down does exist, so I can't just claim it doesn't. I can't change objective reality.

BUT. Say it's more subjective. Say that...that Bob has some characteristic that isn't obvious and clear-cut, like his job. Say he's gay, or has an undiagnosed mental illness, or his favorite color is blue but he never mentions it. Well, forget the blue. The thing is, there is a norm at work, and the reader will probably ASSSUME Bob is a straight guy of normal mental health unless he acts conspicuously gay, mentally ill, etc. But think of all the people you know. How do you KNOW they aren't gay or mentally ill? Let's go with mentally ill here because typing both is too long. Most people say, I think, something like 'if they were mentally ill I would know. I would notice'. But that's not always obvious. Maybe it just seems like a personality quirk, or they've just 'got the blues' or they're just eccentric. Seriously, you may well know someone with a mental illness and not realize it. Because although people think that if you have a mental illness it'll be severe and obvious, it's not always. It can be subtle.

So say when I wrote the novel I had in mind that Bob, although not diagnosed, really has...like...something. You know let's just go with bipolar disorder. People often think it's dramatic--and it can be. But not always, not for everyone. So I write it with this in mind. It's not obvious--and it wouldn't be obvious if you met a real person with Bob's disorder.

A reader reads this, for whatever reason I mention that Bob has bipolar disorder. The reader says 'but it's not obvious in the text. So he doesn't. That's just your interpretation.'

With a real person, this is easy to resolve. Well...with mental illness, not so easy, actually. In real life, people will argue about whether someone is really ill or just making trouble, how severe, what diagnosis, what does that mean. So, this argument does happen in real life. If you don't show enough signs of this or that, you don't count, you aren't a real one of whatever. So...there may be some real-world carry-over. But for many things, in the real world, there is an objective reality. If I say my chair is really a lamp, well, we can all look at the chair and decide if this is true. It's not just my word for it, there actually is a chair. The chair has an objective reality (well, presumably).

But in fiction...it's all made up. So on some level there is NO objective reality. None of it is real, it's all just me saying stuff. So...I say Bob has bipolar disorder. Reader says he doesn't. Who's right?

And I think it's trickiest when one side says 'it's in the text' and the other side says 'it's not in the text'. Or one side says 'well I didn't see any sign that he was bipolar so he isn't'--because...what if you just didn't notice?  Happens in real life. If you pick up on it later, does it count now?  If you never do, does it not count? If some people see it and some don't, what counts?

It might be simplest to say the author is right--or for that matter to pick any arbitrary person to choose as correct. But what I'm asking here is, what makes the most sense, logically?

Really, I think it makes the most SENSE to go with the author being right in a case like that. Because...if I created Bob, then I created him with certain traits. I am the only one who knows what was in my mind when I created him. I am the Bob authority. So...why would some random person who read what I wrote about Bob know it better?  Because. It could be said that the book isn't the source of Bob--the canon. Bob existed in my head first. The book is a filter--me interpreting Bob onto the page. So the book is ALREADY one step removed from Bob. Of course the opposite argument can be made--that once Bob is on the page, he becomes divorced from Bob-in-my-head and is his own thing, existing only on the page, and all other stuff has no bearing. But it isn't obvious to me that that must logically follow. It may be true that I never wrote down that, say, Bob has brown hair--but if I always, while writing, imagined him with brown hair...am I not the authority?  Maybe a reader imagined Bob with blond hair, but...why would they know better than the creator what the created thing looks like?  That doesn't seem to logically follow UNLESS Bob-in-the-book has no link whatsoever to Bob-in-creator's-mind and is in essence a collection of words on a page and nothing else.  BUT if you say that, then Bob more accurately has NO hair color, and you are just pretending he does temporarily. Which is in fact accurate--Bob does not exist--but in the fictional world he clearly has some hair color if he has hair. So it's not accurate as a description of the facts of Bob's fictional world.

Now there are I guess always nonexistent details--maybe the author never picks a favorite food for Bob. But if I DO...well...it doesn't change the book at all--quite true. But...why would it not be accurate? It would be quite true to say that a detail like that, picked after the book is written and published and read, doesn't have much bearing on the book. But Bob's mental illness--that existed all along. So...doesn't that have bearing?

So, it seems quite confusing.

Of course there's also arguments about ownership. I tend to say that the creator is the creator. That is, they may not always own their work in the legal sense. But say I make a painting. I sell the painting. I no longer own it. The owner can do anything to my painting.

But I will always be the creator of the painting, because that is just objective reality. So in THAT sense, the creator ALWAYS 'owns' their work. Not in the legal sense--but in the sense that if they created it, well, they are the creator. It's just a fact. So if the creator says they had a particular intention when creating a work, I think that is more meaningful than the interpretation of some random reader/viewer/whatever.

And this is something I would say even though I write fanfic. And even though I'm not really ultra-big on canon and stuff. Honestly, if someone prefers to think of a series in a non-canon way, so what? It's just a series, right?  Or if someone prefers to think a story's ending is X instead of Y, hey, no biggie. But just because you PREFER it doesn't make it REALITY.

So...I don't have a problem with a reader preferring a certain interpretation of canon. I mean, man, I do that for like every canon that I like. Look at ReEragon, that's just me making a new story that I like better than the real one. But that does not make the new story the actual story. It is a story, yes, but it is not the SAME story as the original, nor does it somehow replace the original.

At the same time--I think if an author flatly contradicts a text, the text wins. So I think the text is, in the end, the most objectively real form of the story. The story in the author's head can only be accessed by putting it in some medium--the text is the chosen medium. 'text' here could also be an oral story, a song, a movie, a painting...the physical form of the story that the author provides is the story that any viewer/reader/etc. must experience, not the in-the-head story. And each reader won't really experience the objective story, but rather an in-the-head story of their own that is based on the objective story. The text is the story everyone read. So, I think that an author's view of their own work is VERY IMPORTANT--you can't really understand the work fully without understanding that, in my opinion (not that you NEED to know it, but it adds to the understanding of something. Enjoyment, not necessarily). And I think it is MUCH MORE meaningful than a random person's interpretation. But it still cannot alter what has actually been written down. The text does exist in objective reality (well, apparently. I am TOO TIRED (or...not tired enough!?) to think about the nature of reality right now), so if I say it does not exist, well, I am just wrong.

But in the case that it's not clear...well, who knows better than the author what the real idea was? It doesn't seem to make sense that a random person would know more than the creator. Now, of course there's the argument that what the work was SUPPOSED to be is meaningless, but...what does that argument mean, really?  Is it saying that only interpretation has meaning?  Does it mean that all thoughts about a work of art are equally valid...and this also equally invalid and meaningless?  Then why do art critics exist? If intention is meaningless, it seems that discussing art is pointless, because interpretation is all personal and individual. Certainly personal taste and opinion is very meaningful--but it cannot be totally divorced from the objective reality of the text, and I think the author's intention is linked to and informs the objective reality of the text. It seems silly to say that authors know nothing about their own work, and sillier to say that readers understand it better than the author. Depends what 'understand' means, I guess. One might say 'the author is wrong to think they have actually shown what they meant to show'--definitely seen that. BUT.

For example--Eragon. He acts like a sociopath. But I think it does matter whether that was intended or not. Writing a sociopath when you MEANT to write a sociopath is quite different from writing a sociopath when you meant to write a hero. It does not change what is actually on the page--but doesn't it change any analysis?  Doesn't it change judgments of whether the book is well-written or not?  For example, a movie like Troy or 300 is very bad if it means to be historically accurate--but if it did not intend to be, well, perhaps it was good instead. Well...I don't know anything about those movies except that they weren't historically accurate. But let's say I write a movie about magical happenings set in, I dunno, ancient Europe or Africa or somewhere. If I was trying to write a historical documentary, I have written it badly. But if I was trying to write a fantasy adventure, perhaps I have done it well. So the intent clearly MATTERS here. The outcome may be identical--it doesn't change what actually exists on screen/page. But it does clearly have an influence on the text and informs it. And if I as the creator say I meant it to be a fantasy, that is MUCH MORE IMPORTANT, in my opinion, than a random viewer saying it was really meant to be a historical documentary and it is just badly done. ...unless I'm lying. But here I just want to examine the case where all parties are truthful. That is, the case where it's dueling opinions/interpretations rather than people lying about what they really meant to do. So, here I'm just talking about--if two people are truthfully describing what they think something is about, who has more weight, creator or random viewer?  I think the creator has more weight in terms of what the thought means for the work. A random viewer's thought doesn't change much. Just a thought. Creator's thought--could really affect opinions of the work, ratings of its success/failure to do as intended, overall affect of the work, etc. So it has more weight in my opinion.

Whoa it's 3am and I'm actually really tired so. Yeah. Also I am not really sure this is coherent all the way through because my brain is just gone right now. I think I'll do the second half of the Spirit Temple tomorrow...waaaah, maybe I'll actually manage to beat the game!  I would be impressed with myself~~~ *laughs*

passes out

2009-12-21T09:47:51Z

It is almost 5 am. I just finished my last assignment. Leaving for home at noon tomorrow. Need to do a few last things first--strip the bed (can't do it tonight because, well, sleeping, obviously), pick up a prescription, deliver this thing if I can (office might be closed...hopefully not, but probably...still, I'll check)...but everything is either packed or piled up so it can be packed when teh parents arrive with teh packing objects. Boxes. Those things. I'm kind of tired right now.

So...done with the semester, at last. Also it snowed several inches. Ahhh...lately I just want to sleep...maybe because I keep staying up till odd hours doing work that I put off ridiculously, so then when I wake up late I goof off and have even less time, and it becomes a vicious cycle? But now I can go hooooome, and sleeeeep...mmm...and work on ReEldest. No seriously I'm gonna do that. I swear.

Time for sleeep...nnngh, if I get up at ten...I can get five hours...nnngh, maybe 11 is fine too...

Also: awesome thing about college--when you're awake at 5 in the morning...probably someone else is too (someone is still awake, studying, in the kitchen. She was laying her head down when I passed by before...well, it IS pretty late/early). That always bothered me as a kid--if I couldn't sleep and it was like 2 in the morning, everyone else was asleep (this was before was brother was at the age to be awake at ridiculous hours). It was lonely. Here at college...there's always SOMEONE else who either stayed up really late or got up really early. Kinda cool.

*passes out*

coughs

2009-12-16T21:35:46Z

Uggggh...I'm really, really sick right now. I started getting a sore throat just before 4pm on Sunday, and now I feel like crap...well...got through two of my finals. 240 was...I guess not awful. 235 I actually felt pretty confident on. I'll do psych after dinner tonight...gotta e-mail my screenwriting professor and see if he has time to meet tomorrow or Friday...gotta neaten up my sculpture portfolio pictures, and then I'll hand them in tomorrow...SO CLOSE to being done so I can go home... This week's Naruto chapter is out really early. Also it is EPIC. Danzou...so gross. SO GROSS. I mean most Naruto villains have creepy body horror but somehow Danzou is the first one to really gross me out. It's like ULTRA SQUICK. I mean...eurgh. All those eyeballs...in his arm...bleeeeh! How does he even USE them...? Sasuke...his facial expressions are a little disappointing. I feel like he used to have a more expressive face...he's clearly angry in this chapter, but I felt like his facial expressions were flatter than they used to be. Still, they weren't totally absent, so it's not so bad. Also it's pretty badass when Danzou is all 'Itachi sucks for telling you the truth, he's a traitor!' and Sasuke is all "NEVER SAY ITACHI'S NAME AGAIN" and is all SQUISH with the Susanoo-hand. Danzou escapes, of course, but still--PRETTY BADASS. And Naruto is having a heart attack or something? Because he's sad about Sasuke? I have no idea. Also Kakashi says he'll go find Sakura because her fighting Sasuke would just get her killed. so...was that subplot completely pointless, then? What a waste of pages! But at least it looks like epicness is in store... Nnngh...nose so stuffy...so tired...just gotta get through one more exam and the script rewrite, and then I can go home and sleeeeeep....nnnngh...

BEST THING EVER OMG

2009-12-08T14:10:56Z

OMG, Lyn, I kind of love him right now. He e-mailed our class saying that he decided to make a bunch of the problems on the last three psets extra credit. One is a problem I already did, which is now worth more (SCORE), and the other two...the problems I was putting off on psets 9 and 10. So if I DON'T manage to find time for them, it's okay. And if I DO, extra credit. LYN I LOVE YOU SO MUCH FOR SRS.

No seriously I feel way less stressed now. Now I just have two problem sets to do, and pset 11 is shorter than it originally was going to be.

...I'm alive...

2009-12-08T03:36:03Z

Yeah, I've been not posting much recently...not that I haven't been internetting, but...nnngh. So much to do before Friday...finished the paper, all but the last question of pset 9 and the last question of pset 10, need to do pset 11 and assignment 9, and whatever revisions for screenwriting...augh, I don't want to do those, I have enough else to do already...

Gaaah, I just want to be done with everything...and even when I am, then I have my finals. Psych is take-home self-scheduled, should be posted to the conference this weekend, maybe I'll try to take it on Monday...need to check when 240 is, I think it's either the 15th or the 17th...not sure about 235 yet.

I'm so tired...I just want to sleep for like a bajillion hours. SO TIRED. I'm just dragging myself around, and I'm having trouble focusing...my brain is worn out. Gaaah, just need to get through this week and finals week, and then I can go home and sleep...just gotta hang on a little longer...

I need to photograph everything for sculpture and get pictures printed at CVS, but that's not so bad. I'll go over the weekend, I guess. Pouring the bronzes was mega-awesomely epic. Like...seriously epic. Like we had to dig a trench to put the molds in and stuff, and then put on this intense gear--face mask thingy, leg covers, heavy long jacket thing (it was silver, anad really stiff and hard to move in and went down past the knees), and ultra-thick gloves. Liquid bronze splashes more than I would have thought...pretty epic-looking. The professor said we did a good job on the pour, actually. Tomorrow we take them out and file them and stuff....ahhhh, I can't wait...I hope it came out well! I'm really looking forward to sculpture tomorrow, but I don't want to go to screenwriting, so I'm conflicted about it being Tuesday tomorrow...we're doing freaking workshopping...I hate workshopping because I hate reading my writing aloud or hearing it read aloud because it causes me massive anxiety attacks. And I'm kind of sick of this class...man, I'm just not a scriptwriter, I don't know. I mean I did fine on my midterm script, I got a B+, but...I don't know. I just really dislike this class. I hate going, and I don't really enjoy doing the work, and once I finish it I don't like doing workshopping because I just want to forget about it entirely. There's just no aspect of this course that I like. I mean my classmates are nice and all, but I don't know any of them all that well, really. Arrrrgh...at least there's only two more classes of it...I have to do freaking revisions, though, after I get the draft back...bleeeh, I feel like this script wasn't very good...I had a lot of trouble with it. And it's freaking 50% of our final grades! I HATE when one assignment is such a big percent of the final grade. I think it's stupid. It doesn't really reflect overall performance, in my opinion. And we've written all of two scripts. That's...really not a lot of script-writing experience to be basing FREAKING 50% on the second script I've ever written in my life (well, second FILM script). Seriously this just annoys me about classes that grade like this. I mean I went through a semester of this class, but the only part that really matters is this one final thing. It makes all the rest of it just feel so fultile...

Psych...I think I'll be fine. Got a B+ on the research paper--not bad. Got a B+ on the third paper we did too, so if I do well on this last paper and on the final...I got 98 on both the other exams, and the final is basically the same format but longer, so I think I'll be fine...I think I'll have a good mark in psycxh.

240...bleeeeh, I don't even know. I got a 77 on the first exam and a 94 on the second one...I do mediocre on the problem sets. Hopefully I'll do all right...235...I think I do better on the 235 problem sets than the 240 ones, but this may be because the 240 ones are put of about 30 points each and the 235 ones are out of anywhere from like 100 to 140 points, depending on the problem set, which gives an impression of a higher grade just becuase the numbers are higher. I did well on the midterm--83.5, I think? Can't recall, but something like that. Just above the class average, actually. So...hopefully the final will go okay too? I feel fairly okay about 235...the problem sets are just looming over me is all...

Nnngh...I just want to be done with everything. Gaaah, so much to do...I feel like I just have no time...

FINALLY

2009-12-01T03:04:37Z

Got 16 pages in the program I'll use...I'll see what that comes to in the .txt version. Guess I'll go to the science center, read it through, print it...AHHH PLEASE LET THIS BE GOOD GRADE WORTHYYYYYY. I mean...I kind of like it. It sort of cracks me up but it's also sad. I kind of like the dynamic at the end--she tells him she doesn't blame him, if their positions were reversed she'd go right ahead and torture him, so he should do what he has to do. And then he lets her go. So it ends up being...she would've tortured him, but he couldn't bring himself to torture her. So...it's a bit sad. Although maybe she wouldn't really have? Probably she would have, though...

I mean, I like the dynamic--but I'm not sure how well it came across in the plot, if it's at all clear...I'm not super confident. I hope there aren't any gaping problems, like I forgot to explain something that seems obvious to me but is completely not obvious to the reader/viewer...ahhh...that's a problem I often have, failing to put in information...

Well...just gotta hope it's all right, I guess. I do LIKE it, at least. So I'm happy I at least wrote something I enjoyed writing and like. Hopefully my professor will also like it. *DREAD* Soooo...yeah. Ahhh, hope my research paper is okay too...I got a B+ on the paper we got back today. But frankly, I'm quite happy with that. I mean, man, B+ is good. I'm doing freaking great in that course. So...hopefully even if my research paper isn't perfect, it'll be okay, and my overall good grade will bouy up any research paper issues. I mean, I think it's a good paper...but I worry about possible mistakes in the format and stuff...it's been a while since I wrote a research paper...well...nothing to do but just go on to the next assignment I've got to finish. Just gotta power through, and then....weeeeekeeeeend....that'll be good...unless I have more assignments then...ah well, at least THIS week's assignments will be over.

So...close...

2009-12-01T02:17:52Z

Just over 11 pages...so close...so very close...must...go just...a little farther....auuuugh, PLEASE let this be passably good...it was hard to write...I don't know if it really worked, truthfully...if all the information has been properly revealed...well...hopefully the last 4 pages will work, and then I can print it and maybe start pset 9 or maybe assignment 8...ARGH STUPID BUSY WEEK BLEEEEH.

Must...keep...going...

2009-11-30T21:13:23Z

Okay, I have just over five pages of them...arguing about whether he should torture her? It got...strangely comedic somehow...also, he's basically begging her to make up a lie so he can claim he tortured it out of her, and she's...refusing? I really don't understand these two, but...it IS strangely in-character...I mean...sometimes I think they're contrary on purpose just to be bitchy to each other. -__-;;; But now--fight scene time! I can always pad more towards the front if I MUST...I already added some extra spacing in the dialogue. Well--with so much dialogue, it helps it look nicer, too! I mean...so it's easier to read...I mean...LOOK I AM DOING MY BEST OKAY (...who am I defending myself to...? ^_^;;;;)

ARGH FAIL WRRRRY

2009-11-30T20:56:56Z

ARRRGH I have like a page and a half. ARGH ARGH ARGH. I just...I just don't know how many pages I can get out of this! Also...I feel kind of blocked on it...ARRRRRRRRRRGH DAAAAAMMIIIIIT...nnngh. Must...keep...writing...I just don't know what they would SAY. I mean...I was planning for a reveal to be at the end, but...apparently the order has been reversed? It ended up different than I expected. Although...it makes sense I guess? I mean, he would probably try to assume a best-case scenario. No one WANTS to believe someone they like is a traitor by choice. She just...I don't know. She's a prisoner, it's kind of...she's less dialogue-y than I'd like. Also no actual torture happens. Because...well...it wouldn't make sense...the THREAT of torture happens? Also there will be a fight scene that hopefully I can make last at LEAST half a page. ARRGH WHY IS THIS SO SHORT DAAAAMMIIIIT

AHHHH WRRRRRY

2009-11-30T19:09:20Z

As it turns out--first draft of the final script is due TOMORROW. TOMORROW! FREAKING TOMORROW! ARRRRRGH. The research paper is done, and...hopefully it's okay? I don't have time to edit it anymore. Need to write the script, then do assignment 8 and pset 9. ARGH ARGH ARGH. But...

I keep getting the urge to take a walk...probably because I'm just having trouble with the script. I'm worried that it won't make 15 pages...and I can't really insert scenes, because...well, if I restructured the entire thing, but it would be very hard to make it work. Ahhhhhhh, please let it be long enough...also it's mostly dialogue and that's not my strength. Just...gotta write it...gotta make myself write it...

EDIT: also I have decided that it is a communist dictatorship. ...in the script, I mean. I needed a government that got in power by violent revolution AND a violent revolution opposing them, and I bounced it around and thought--what about...like...Eastern European communist dictatorship? ...I mean it doesn't really MATTER, but...it's a setting, I guess? -__-;;; Maybe I can make random references to The Party. I mean I want BOTH sides to be pretty bad here. There Are No Heroes, basically...also that way I can make them wear like...heavy coats. I like heavy coats. ...yeah so.

Nnngh...

2009-11-28T05:26:59Z

Okay...the paper is basically done. That is, I wrote it today, I still need to do a read-through and make sure it makes at least some sense. Also I need to attach the works cited and make the inline citations have the correct format. But basically...it's done. Whatever.

Still need to work on the script and I should start problem set 9 at some point...and then when break is over....*shudders*...FINALS WILL BE COMING ARRRRAGH so yeah.

Also nano writing has basically halted in favor of research paper (and yesterday in favor of sleep and Thanksgiving with the relatives). Also...I am just...so stuck on the plot. I want to finish the darn thing, but I'm just...okay, I'll work on it right now. Right now! But I don't know what to have them DO, honestly...although...maybe Larc should finally connect the dots and realize that, holy crap, there must be HEROES out there. Although I kind of want that to happen when they find Ranja. So...maybe I should just have the heroes attack and get it over with. There was supposed to be an interlude part where the plot doesn't really advance because they, as villains, can't really advance it yet (well, they aren't full-fledged villains. They're ALMOST villains. So they really can't). Because the right time hasn't come for the plot to advance. But...I can't think of something for them to do while they wait. I could always focus on Bard, but...I feel like he would instinctively want to follow Larc around, but I don't know what on earth they'd say to each other. Larc's a bit...out of it. Also he has no idea how to talk to people anymore, after 15 years of mental interruptions and basically being trapped in his own little world. Sooo...I'll try to crank out some wordcount. Maybe I'll just skip ahead to the bit where the heroes attack. Although I'm not sure HOW they attack, honestly...this year's nano didn't turn out that well, really...great concept, but I wasn't able to execute it very well. Well...maybe some time when I'm more on board with the story and have it planned out better. Eh, I got some awesome wordcount (although less awesome than in previous years. My first year was the highest I've yet gotten, possibly because that was the only year I was in highschool rather than college, so I was writing through more of the day, what with using my laptop during classes). Last year's wordcount was very low--in December, I edited it to just over 40k, actually. I trimmed it a lot. Well, that was a pretty simple story with a small cast and a single location. There were really only a few main conflicts, and they were all linked. I mean last year's novel was really the story of this one guy and what happens to him after his teacher is killed. It's a pretty simple premise. It's the second year I actually finished, and as far as finished + writing quality, I think my best (not that it's high-quality writing, but it's not horrible either. Good for a first draft, at least. Although there's just this one major edit I want to do, this one plot point that I need to change because it doesn't really make sense. It does story-wise, but I feel like it's out-of-character for Sarx...it's not glaring, but I just don't think it fits the way I want it to). First year was surprisingly good in terms of writing quality (not overall, but MOSTLY the writing was pretty good. Plot was a bit all over, because I figured it out as I went, but even there, not terrible). Second year...heh, another failed detective novel attempt. This year...loved the concept, but the execution is really quite poor. There's a handful of scenes I think work VERY well, but there's just nothing holding them together. Needed more planning. Well, see, my first year I didn't plan, but it worked because it was, again, the story of basically this one guy with this very specific conflict. The rest kind of fell into place. This year's novel had a larger cast and a biiiig map, so I think I really needed to figure out who was going where and when ahead of time, to make everything fit together. Well, I'll try to at least finish it...and then...winter break is for ReEldest. Which I'm kind of excited about, actually...also I'm in a writing mood because at home, see, before I left for school we had ordered this bookcase, but I left before it got here. So I came home and BOOKCASE TALLER THAN ME FULL OF BOOKS and that fills me with book-loving joy. I mean, man, you could just give me a room with walls made of bookcases and I'd be quite happy. Ahhh...booooooks....*happy sigh*

So yeah, gonna write a bit, I guess...not sure what to do next, but eh, I did at least pass 50k. And writing nano has geared me up into writing mode, hopefully...*laughs* Still need to work on the script...nnngh, annoying. At least once I finish the script, I think that's the last major assignment (I mean we'll have a revisions round too I think, but the script is the final project thingy) for that, so that'll be out of the way hopefully...psych, this paper is the second-to-last assignment, I think we have a final exam as well but I've done well on the two exams we've had so far, so I think I'll be okay...235...we haven't gotten the midterm back yet, so I don't have as much of an idea of how I'm doing there, but I think I can handle it. 240...that's the one I think will be tricky. I think sculpture involves a final portfolio or whatnot, which is like...I think there may be a final project too. Arrrrrgh, that'll be a time-sink...oh well...we're doing brass casting when we get back, so that should be awesome. I took wax home, but I don't know that I'll make anything...I mean...I don't know, my wax-related ideas are limited...not sure why. Just not my medium, I guess. Wire's been my favorite so far.

So...yeah. Got the paper done...gonna try to nano a bit. Not writing for a few days, and stopping on a spot where I didn't know what was happening...well, I stopped writing because I literally did not know what to write next. But it did kill my momentum a bit...but! I shall go for it. YOSH! With the power of youth! *laughs*

Also happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it and all.

Holy Crap.

2009-11-23T21:23:10Z

Oh my God, I just finished reading like the most amazing fic ever. I mean seriously. The Darkest Hour, by das_mervin, up on her lj. SO GOOD HOLY CRAP. I mean...whoa. THAT'S what a writer is like.

I mean it made me like Edward (it's a Twilight fic--Edward's backstory, if he had...like...an actual characterization of any kind). IT MADE ME LIKE EDWARD. I mean by the end I just wanted to give him a freaking hug. (this may be because I have a thing for redemption plots and/or characters who get badly broken) SO AMAZING. Also weirdly, creepily sexy. It had no sexual content, but vampire biting as a metaphor for sex LIEK WHOA GAIZ FOR SRS. Holy crap, that's WRITING. I mean...man.

Also my plaster piece came out super well! Ahhh...those hours of filing it down were all worth it...SO pleased. Plus I turned in the essay and finished the wax sculpture (it's a...six legged crab. Well...it's not terrible? ^_^;;;;), still need to do the problem set, so that'll be tonight's project. Lab in about half an hour...lots of people (including me, obviously) are going to today's lab instead of the Wednesday session because of Thanskgiving break. Otherwise I'd be driving home (well, my dad would be driving, I would be sitting in a car sleeping) after 5, soooo...traffic. Yeah.

Nano...well, I broke 50k. Story...eh. I'll try to finish it, and...I can always edit some time, if I feel like it. And it's been fun going out writing with Tika and Kori on weekends. So, fun nano this year, but I don't think the writing is good. My first and third nanos have been my highest quality so far...third year is the highest quality that's also finished (my first nano never got completed...I want to eventually redo it with a revamped plot. Also age Zekiel up a bit because...well, it makes the plot work better--if he's in college he can go places at night and stuff without the issue of 'don't his parents even CARE that he disappears and gets weird injuries and hangs out with his teacher at odd hours?' and all, plus it makes it easier to kill Piers unsuspiciously, and just gives the whole plot more flexibility. Aaaand...okay I'm just not comfortable with writing a relationship that if consumated would be statutory rape. I mean it's a big enough age gap as it is (about 80 years, actually...^_^;;;;). Sooo...yeah).

So yeah. Ahhh...over break, I need to: 1. write the research paper for psych, 2. write the final script for screenwriting, 3. IF I have time, work on pset 9 for 235, but that's bottom of the list and doesn't need to be completed over break, so it probably won't happen.

For the script...see, I think that the Id and Superego idea was something that I was like 'oh man, this is so clever and hilarious!' but which isn't really a very good story. I love the CONCEPT, but the execution/actual plot is a bit...meh. SO. Torture interrogation scenario. Oh yeah...see, at first the viewer should sympathize with the prisoner, but THEN it will be revealed that the prisoner is from what's basically a terrorist group, so that BOTH sides are unsympathetic! ...I mean I still find them a little sympathetic, but...

Writing torture where you need to make the torturer sympathetic is...a challenge. I mean I think I CAN, but I find it deeply squicky because I'm just completely opposed to torture. I mean it's just wrong, you know? But I have characters who totally think that it is their duty/only option/whatever, and when I'm writing them, I'm like, okay, I see where they're coming from...so it's this weird place where what they're doing is abhorrent, but I'm finding them sympathetic and even characters who are morally good and stuff. Like Ray--she's just...she's very noble, and she actually does follow high moral ideas. She honestly does. But she also employs torture as a tactic. From her perspective, it's what she HAS to do, and it's just a convention of war. Both sides do it, she's been raised in a society that sees it as a totally expected part of war...I could try to make her just think it's wrong or whatever, but that wouldn't be in-character. But I still see her as a really good person. So it's...weird. Very weird. I mean I know that's part of writing etc., but it is sometimes a bit uncomfortable to sympathize with a character who's doing something you find really wrong. It's just so weird. But it makes sense, I guess? I mean I can see all the reasons why the characters do it...and I see all the other things that they do, which are really good, and that they're doing the best they can given their societies...but still, they're torturing people.

It's a similar problem with characters who kill people. That is, kill people in a situation other than like...during a battle in a war, or self-defense, or whatnot. For example, Sarx is effectively an executioner. Under the demons' laws, people are sentenced to death, and he goes and finds them and reads them...sort of their rights, or at least their crimes, and then he kills them. Now, the people he kills are mostly able to fight back (some of them are demon hunters, actually), but he's quite strong and he is going out and finding these people and killing them. In his society, this is totally legal--it's just their death penalty. The people are all murderers (they killed demons, so they don't see themselves as murderers, but that is in fact murder). But still, he's hunting people down and killing them. I mean he's intended to be a dark character, not a paragon of goodness, but I still see him as essentially a good person who is protecting his people the only way he is able to. But...he kills people. It's...odd. Vice gets this a bit too. A number of them, really...the detectives notably avoid this--they are ALWAYS trying to take the criminal alive. They kill only when it's a matter of self- or other-defense. Alan in particular has the lowest kill count (that being zero) of almost any character I have who carries a weapon around pretty much all the time. Most of my characters who are armed have used their weapons before. I have other characters who don't kill people, but they're almost all characters who don't have any combat or weapons training, don't own weapons, don't get into many dangerous situations, etc. Rasha, for example, has never killed anyone--but why would she? She's a performer at a theater, it's not a job with a high kill-count. Whereas Alan actually has a death-related job (...that sounds so odd, heh).

But so yeah, torture interrogation scenario (also secretly it MAY be modern AU Arya and Durza. Just cause. Also I'm planning to work on ReEldest over winter break, so I'm thinking about it anyway, so that makes writing easier. And it's been ages since I wrote them).

And then...ReEldest WILL be worked on over the break! I'll finally force myself to just get started on it (I have project-starting inertia...*laughs*).

So yeah...three days, counting today and Wednesday, until break...so close! Of course I have stuff to do over break, but still.

Man, I'm busy!

2009-11-21T03:51:03Z

So, this weekend is PACKED! I have to write a paper (only two pages, but I need to work up some data, so it may take more time...), finish the problem set (hopefully this won't take more than one night...hopefully...), aaaaand...the sculpture.

Well, we have a wax piece we have to make as well. Maybe I'll make...like...an abstract crab. I don't know why, just because. But anyway. My piece ALMOST came out of the mold, but the fins broke off almost entirely. HOWEVER! The mold mostly survived, so I glued it back together and replastered some parts and added a piece of burlap (my professor suggested it...you put it on the mold and then put more plaster over it. It makes it stronger, apparently. Some people had used them to close seams in molds with many pieces, and it looked really hard to remove), and tomorrow I'll finish filing it flat, and try recasting it. I'm going to add the plaster more slowly, and make sure to shake out any air bubbles...hopefully that will help strengthen the fins. Then I'll let it sit overnight, so it has maximum dried-ness and strength, and then on Sunday, or Monday if I don't have time on Sunday, I'll remove it...and hopefully all will go well. Ahhh...I filed the inside the get rid of any undercuts, so hopefully it'll work...

And on Sunday I'm doing a bunch of Multifaith-related stuff, so I'll be busy pretty much all night after 4, so I may not get much done that day.

I plan to do the paper tomorrow--Kori and Tika and I are planning to hang out in this cool room at the library and do some writing together, so I plan to do the paper. Hopefully it won't be too hard. Then kendo, and after that I'll do the mold, and with any remaining time, work on the problem set (I'm not sure how long doing the mold will take, so the problem set may get pushed to Sunday or Monday). The wax sculpture...I'll do it whenever I have a spare moment, probably, he just gave us the wax to take with us and play with. I have a big ol' sheet of wax in my bag, basically.

The wax is hard to work with...it's very stiff, and it doesn't meld together very well. It's not very flexible. For the crab...I guess I'll make a sort of roughly trapezoidal thing, thicker at the narrow end, and add sharp leg-ish things. It might be cool. Not sure how well the legs will stick on, though...we're going to be casting them in bronze. I had this image in my mind of this other design, but I couldn't get it to work in the wax...I just wasn't sure how to make it look, and I couldn't figure out a shape that I liked. So, I'll give the crab a shot. Man, this would be easier in clay...alas! Well, the wax is a new material, I suppose I'll give it time. But it's annoying because it gets your fingers all waxy...and then it's hard to get the wax off. Bleh.

In nano: over 47k. I'm almost done with the wordcount, but the story...not so much. Nnnngh, Bard is...hard to write. Well, not him, but...I don't know, I think I'm in a bit of a slump with this one. I'm having trouble getting it to work...the part I'm at now is the part where, well, basically nothing happens (it's the part before the heroes attack, so it's literally the part where nothing happens because they effectively ran out of story in their own story). See...there needs to be time before the heroes attack, and I do want Bard to interact a bit with everyone, especially Larc, but I'm not sure what they should DO. Also their traits start progressing...slowly, though. Ayric's doesn't start to express as much until later, when they go to the Ancient Library of Plot Importance, but the King's starts to get out of control. And this is the part where that starts happening.

Bard is...an odd character. In some sense he ISN'T a character, so to speak. He just came into existence, and he's God, but no one KNOWS that, so they assume he just has amnesia--they don't realize that he has no memories because he literally didn't exist prior to the moment they found him. I see Bard as a separate character, in some sense, from God. He's sort of--three characters. He is God, in some sense. He's also Bard, the person currently in the stories. When his memories return, he's a mix of the two. But in a weird way, I sort of see Bard as dying when he regains his memories, in the sense that he as Bard--as an ordinary person rather than a god--ceases to exist, and he's God instead. He isn't the same person, and the change is really abrupt. I guess the thing is...before he regains his memories, who IS he? He didn't forget his God memories, because...well, he didn't have them at any point. It's more like God, in becoming Bard, forgets...but Bard has nothing to start with. He's an empty shell that accidentally got the wrong thing put in it. It's not entirely clear to me what Bard IS. I mean...he's God, but...is he also a separate person? Or is he just God-with-no-memories? Does it make a difference? It's a weird question...

But his personality is odd too. Or at least I don't fully understand it yet. He's...kind of spaced out. He feels disconnected from the world, because he has no memories of it. I'm not sure yet if that changes over time...probably.

the other thing is that he clearly has SOME types of memory--procedural memory, for example. He knows how to talk, he knows how to do things, he knows what things are--that is, he doesn't go around asking what, say, a tree is, or a chair is. So he DOES have certain types of memories, just no autobiographical ones. The weird thing is that in some sense, his procedural memories aren't....well, memories. I mean, they are based on the part of the brain they're in and whatnot and in their function, but they aren't memories in the sense that they weren't formed by experiences. They were just sort of stuck into Bard's head. He really does have no experiences of his own--his memories aren't really what we'd call memories. That is, memories are formed based on information that is received by the brain and it gets put into long-term memory sometimes and etc. But Bard's memories have no connection to any events or experiences whatsoever (his procedural memories. People usually mean autobiographical memories when they say 'memories'--that is, things we remember happening to us and whatnot. But our memories of how to do things are procedural memories. So, for example, when you write your name, you know how to do it from a procedural memory. Same for tying your shoes or using a key to unlock a door. When you do those things, you don't have to figure out how to do it each time--you already know. You remember it.).

So, he's hard to write...the problem is that people are the way they are because of all their various experiences. But Bard has no experiences, so why is he the way he is? He's just...made that way. It's weird and kind of creepy and it's hard to write. Well, hopefully I'll get better at writing him.

So yeah...it's a busy weekend! Hopefully I'll get everything done, though. Oh yeah, I need to do the lab assignment too--hopefully it won't take too long. But tomorrow...I'm going to sleep. I'm gonna sleep SO MUCH, seriously. Mmm, I've been looking forward to my EPIC SLEEPING all week...*laughs*

How...unexpected.

2009-11-19T03:58:15Z

So...45,815. Those last 3k or so are...well...suddenly my novel derailed into a discussion of various philosophical ideas about existence and proofs thereof, basically?

Because, see, I was trying to write Bard. This is the first bit he's really been in, after his appearance. At this point in the story, he's been basically tagging around with Ayric. Ayric doesn't know anything about Bard, but Ayric is under the impression that Larc does know about Bard, so Bard is going to find Larc and basically ask him who the heck he is and what he's doing here. Larc doesn't actually know this either, so it's going to be a disappointment. But anyway...

So I was writing about his memory-less state, and then I got off on this tangent about how we know things happened, memories, existence, Last Thursdayism, how do we know the world isn't just a dream, a little Decartes and Bishop Berkely, and then I was at 45,815 and I thought I should go on with the plot.

And yet, I feel that this tangent was plot-relevant...sort of. It was kind of fun to write, anyway...*laughs* Also I'm caught up on wordcount until...if I round um to 46k, until the 23. So...back to doing work, now...oh well. ^_^;;;

I mean it's more plot-related than the tangent about computer programming, at least. *laughs*

Exam tomorrow...my notes are in order...I guess I'll go through them, then go to sleep early. Meh...also I want to finish the problem set tomorrow, and do the script revisions...well, I should have plenty of time tomorrow, I suppose...NNNGH, I'm just in a lazy mood this week. *headdesk* Also I'd rather be thinking about philosophy right now, instead of studying. See, my interests ARE intellectual and academic-ish--just...not directed towards things I'm required to be doing right now. Heh. ^_^;;;;

Oh well...back to work....

Bleeeh...

2009-11-18T05:11:52Z

Hmmm...42,756 words. I've been slacking off on writing lately...well, I've had work to do, so I put that first. Bleeeh...did most of the problem set, and then decided sleep was more important than finishing it tonight. Still need to do one last bit of problem 1, most of problem 2 I think, problem 3...I think still a bit of that, the computer bits of problem 4, and problem 5. Problem 5 is actually all pencil-and-paper, but I just didn't finish it tonight. So I've done all the pencil-and-paper bits, and just need to do the egrep and emacs stuff.

Revisions for screenwriting due Friday..exam on Thursday. So revisions will get done on Thursday as well. Bleeeeh...it's a sort-of busy week. Not insanely busy, but busy enough that it's annoying.

Also my mold didn't work well in sculpture...the fins got stuck a bit, and I need to figure out how to get the other half of the mold off of the plaster casting...the professor said it was workable, but...nnngh, I'm just disappointed. I worked hard on it...the clay sculpture survived totally intact, though, so I kept it instead of chucking it in the bin. I rather like the sculpture. I mean, since I still have it I could (if I wanted to invest many hours and a crapload of plaster) make another mold, theoretically. But...nnnngh, I just don't have the extra time. If I had a free evening--with really nothing else to do--I could make a mold...but if I can get the casting out of the mold successfully, I could probably fix the fins, the main body and MOST of the fins is fine, they just cracked a bit towards the tips...IF the other half of the mold comes off properly. Nnngh, I was careful with it, but...well, it's the first time I ever did it, so I mean obviously you never know, and the professor did say that possibly most of us would end up breaking out molds getting the things out (my mold did break--but it could be put back together, it only cracked. Although the bit that came off the fin area would be tricky to reassemble), and other people had issues with the molds too...but the two sculptures that were removed so far came out mostly intact. Nnngh...I don't know, I'm just disappointed. Hours of work, and it didn't quite come out right...it was just SO CLOSE, you know? Bleeeeh...I did have fun making the mold, though. And pouring the plaster in--the...other guy (I think he like...assists our professor? He's not the professor, but he's someone in the department, and he's always there for our class...I know his name, but not exactly what he does, or if he teaches any classes...) vastly overestimated the amount of plaster I would need, so he had me make two buckets, and then he poured it in and it took like half a bucket, so then I just had this bucket of plaster. Someone else needed plaster anyway, though (that's the beauty of it--SOMEONE needs plaster, since we're all doing molds). But then he was helping someone else with a mold and made only one bucket (maybe because of his previous overestimation?), and then that one turned out to need a bunch more. It just cracked me up a little. I was like 'sooo...anyone need a bucket of plaster?', because that stuff hardens pretty fast so you need to use it right away or you have a solid bucket of plaster. So it was a bit lulzy.

Still...so disappointing! Ahhhh...nnngh, well, need to study and finish the problem set tomorrow, exam on Thursday, do the revisions on Thursday...and then it'll be ALMOST the weekend. That'll be nice...man, I'm totally sleeping in this Saturday, I am just sleeping the heck out of the whole morning. YESSSS....

Hmmmm...

2009-11-16T04:37:25Z

This script idea is more difficult than I thought...I mean, it kind of comes off as a romantic comedy even though I don't really picture it that way. And I have at least one person in my workshop group who just plain hates romantic comedies, and therefore will probably dislike my treatment just because of that. Not that that would make me change it or anything, because it's a genre criticism rather than a content criticism, but it still kind of bugs me...I mean it's like 'I do not enjoy genre x, therefore any writing in genre x should really be in some other genre'. It's like if you read a murder mystery and suggested that the writer take out the murder part, because that's just so unpleasant, you know? Oh well...

Also it's really hard to write something that's basically a bunch of dialogue, which is what two characters in a room kind of ends up being. I mean they're searching for things buried in the basement, but still, they're really just talking while searching a basement. Nnngh...oh well...whatever, I'll turn it in and see what the professor says. Although...I don't know, I like the concept but I'm not sure how good I can make it...I'll try, obviously, but I'm a bit nervous. Well, I'll finish the first draft of it tonight at least...that way I'll have accomplished at least SOMETHING, bleh.

Reached 41k last night--I was going to post the part I had written, but I tried pasting it into lj from MSWord and then of course the tags went wacky so I deleted it all and stripped out the tags and stuff, but then lj was just giving me errors about incorrect markup code or something, so I was just like WHATEVER and didn't post it. But I got up to the bit where they find the Instrumentality. I haven't written a word today...bleh, maybe I'll write just a little, so I've done at least something. I have enough of a word cushion that I'm fine with taking a break from writing to do homework. Also I had this really horrible dream last night. It was this long dream of me finding out that this friend of mine had died, and then the rest of the dream was me wandering around sobbing. Through like weird locals. It was really, really depressing, because in the dream I was just SO MISERABLE. I mean I was like sobbing hysterically in my dream for...probably most of the morning (I slept pretty late...well, with that dream, it wasn't very restful sleep...)

It wasn't very restful regardless, though...I think this means I need to change my sheets, I've been putting it off. But you reach that point where you're like 'this isn't comfy' in that 'need new sheets' way. ...if that makes sense. It makes sense to me, at least. My neck/shoulder is mostly better, although not totally, so I'm hoping it'll be all cleared up pretty soon. nnnngh, morning classes tomorrow...DX

EDIT: Okay, treatment written...hmmm, it's okay, I guess. It's hard to write just two pages (even WITH narrow margins), even though when I start I always worry about being too short. Also, I think that I may change the central focus...I mean, the focus is on the Ego (who has been named Bob because Bob was always my filler name for everything, so now I find it amusing to name unimportant or offscreen characters Bob....^_^;;;), but I think the deeper focus is on the basement itself (the basement represents the unconscious). Freudian theory seems to see the unconscious as this scary place, full of uncontrollable desires and drives and repressed thoughts, and proposes that repression exists because all that stuff in the unconscious would be anxiety-inducing were we to consciously be aware of it. Thus, the unconscious becomes this barely-controlled seething mass of terrifying bad thoughts and drives. However, there are other views of the unconscious--for example, it has been proposed that repression needn't exist, because ordinary processes of forgetting can account for any repressed stuff, so the unconscious would be ALL forgotten stuff--even like where you left your keys. And the unconscious can be seen as a center for creativity, and other good stuff. So, I like the idea of the central focus of the plot being that the basement starts as this nasty, scary place, but as they explore it, they discover that it's actually not so bad--sometimes boring, some sad stuff, but mostly pretty good stuff. And, if they stopped putting all bad things in the basement and dealt with them rather than hiding them away, the basement could be a pleasant place. So, the story ends with them deciding to renovate the basement (thus, they symbolically decide to change their views of the unconscious from terrifying and full of dirty, bad things to a place that is hidden, but still ultimately good. so...a more humanist-ish view, I guess? ). Also the conflict for Bob (who is never onscreen but who they talk about a lot) is that he supposedly has developed an obsession with spiders--he keeps seeing them everywhere at work. His therapist feels this means Bob has a fear of women and is a latent homosexual (I looked up some Freudian symbols--spiders can sometimes symbolize fear of mother-incest and the female genitalia. It seemed to fit well with the plot twist, too). The final scene has the Superego explain that Bob finally just called an exterminator, and it turned out that in the basement of his office, there was an infestation of spiders--he wasn't obsessed with spiders, there actually were a lot of spiders, and he just happened to be observant enough to notice them (also, it ties in with the general basement symbolism--all the bad things in the basement turned out to have very ordinary sources, rather than being mysterious. Further, they could not continue to be hidden--that was not a successful strategy. Bob solves his problem by dealing with the spiders directly--he notices them, confronts them, and gets rid of them...but obviously spiders still exist in the world and even in his office building, so it's like...he dealt with the overwhelming problem, and in the future, rather than put spiders in the basement, he will learn to deal with them as they come, so that they don't build up). Yeah, I got a little overboard with the symbolism...but I enjoy that! *laughs* Well, most of it isn't explicitly explained, although the Id will explicitly suggest that maybe putting shit in the basement is a bad idea, and that drives and desires don't have to stay locked away down there. But the secondary symbolism of Bob's office basement is a throwaway, I guess, since it's only mentioned in passing. I like it, though. *laughs* I wonder if it'll write well...it's really mostly dialogue. I think the middle may be montage-ish--they search through the baesment and discover that it has positive aspects, rather than being totally nasty and bad. I don't know if the treatment currently expresses that well, though...I may edit it to show that more. I mean the story is really about the basement, and them realizing that they were wrong about the basement (well, the Id is mostly right about the basement. He convinces the Superego of this. But he did think the basement was unpleasant, until he realized that they had MADE the basement unpleasant by putting all bad things down there). So, I'll probably do some edits tomorrow...also need to start the problem set, arrrrrgh...

So... guess I'll finish the treatment and go to sleep. *shrugs*

Nnngh...

2009-11-15T02:14:23Z

Not a very productive day...my back/shoulder is less painful, but still sore. Hopefully this means it'll be all better quite soon...I skipped kendo, because it kind of involves a lot of raising of the arms and stuff, soooo...yeah. Went into Nadick with Kori and Tika. Bought this book I've been wanting to get for ages--Awakenings by Oliver Sacks. It's about his experiences working with post-encephalytic patients, from the Sleepy-Sickness epidemic in the 1920s, and it's just fascinating. It's an amazing book, you learn so much about the disease and its affects but also there's this real humanity in all the case studies, it's very much a book about people, not just about a disease in the abstract. And I think that's very important, because a disease is always an interaction with the person who has it...it isn't just this abstract thing. Anyway it's a wonderful book. I continue to collect Oliver Sacks books...*laughs*

ALSO! Had an idea for the treatment. Well, I got it last night, really. See, I had this random thought--imagine a story about a guy who has a relationship with a woman who is a hallucination (or at least he THINKS she's a hallucination). It was just this random thought, and then it spiraled into this other thing, and then I had this idea of this one character asking this other character about which two parts of the Freudian psyche should date, if they could date (the Ego, Superego, and Id, that is). And then I thought--imagine if you had a character who represents the ego, right, and then his Superego and his Id are like...people in his head or like in the dimension of his subconscious or whatever, and they argue about his problems.

So yeah. The two characters would be the Id (this...grungy guy who is a pyromaniac and is always playing with a lighter) and the Superego (a somewhat fussy, perfectionist woman), and the "room" would be this really nasty basement filled with like random crap, which represents the Ego's subconscious. And the Ego is in some kind of difficulty, and the Id and Superego are arguing about it. Also the Id totally has a thing for the Superego. And they end up deciding to just join forces from then on, in the end. I'm kind of in love with this idea, although it will take some research into Freudian psychological theory and what conflicts are there. To my knowledge, Freudian psychology has a huuuuge emphasis on sexual stuff, so I'm thinking the Ego's problem will be something sexual. And the Superego and the Id argue about how it arose, and stuff. I'm not sure I can make it fill 15 pages, but...maybe? It could be interesting, anyway.

See, this also arose because I was thinking about this set of characters I have who are all actors, so I sometimes kind of play around with ideas for plays they could do, so I pictured these two characters as Sarx and Rasha, and that made the idea much more interesting. 'Sarx' actually works really well as a name for the Id, too (it means 'flesh' in Latin, I believe). Better than it works as his actual name, haha.

So, I'll do some research as to what conflicts could be issues, and write the treatment, hopefully. I'm very much in love with this idea, although it may be a little...out there. Also I actually really disagree with most of Freudian psychology, but in this case it makes for an interesting plot idea. Well...it's kind not really Freudian, I suppose, in that the characters' final answer to their problem is to merge the Id and the Superego into one department, basically. Thus making things like repression and stuff unnecessary. And the Id is all like 'you lock me down in this shitty basement, and shove all this crap you want to repress down here, so of course I cause trouble!' I kind of like the idea of the Id being upset about people always seeing it as bad and stuff, haha.

So...yeah. That's my idea. Also: over 40k. Just reached the part where God disappears. Poor Larc...*laughs* I'm like...12k ahead on my wordcount, I think. I'm not as satisfied with my story as I was last year, though...but it has some good scenes and stuff. Well, whatever.

So...yeah. That's pretty much all I got done today...nnn...I meant to do more...maybe I'll try to start the problem set, at least...

AAAAAAAGH

2009-11-14T18:12:19Z

Dammit, I just did something to some muscle in my back/shoulder. ...well, it hurts in that area when I turn my head too far to the right. Owwww...

So...much...plaster...

2009-11-14T01:33:30Z

Man, plaster gets EVERYWHERE. Using the plaster was fun, though. We had to mix it, then apply it, then apply another coat, apply this clay mixture to keep the other half of the mold from sticking...I had a lot of fun. I think partly because sometimes in sculpture, particularly when we have a model, we just sit in one place and sculpt for two and a half hours. I get antsy. But this time, there was going to make more plaster, applying it, checking...lots of different tasks. So I didn't get antsy or fidgety. The time went by really quickly. Ahhh, next class we're breaking apart the molds...ahhh, I hope mine comes out properly...I tried to put on enough plaster, but I'm not sure...*crosses fingers*

Also, it seems this week we have an exam in 240. On Thursday. At least there's no problem set...AAAGH. Lyn's test was long, but at least it was just the one test and we were done with the midterm. In psych and 240, we've had this like...double midterm. It's weird. And of course in screenwriting the final project has now been assigned, argh.

However!  We got back our midterm projects today. I was kind of worried--we did workshopping groups first, and only one other person from my group was there today, and she was like 'it's...fine, I guess...' and didn't really like it. But I got back the script, and I got B+,B+,A,A! (there were four things he graded us on--characters, plot, dialogue, and mechanics). I was worried about the mechanics--I didn't really know what I was doing, so I just imitated the script we were reading at the time, Chinatown, in terms of the format, and let my program (Celtx) do the formatting--but it seems they were fine. Also he actually said my dialogue was 'pitch-perfect'. I thought it was okay, but not great.

I do like how he's handling revisions--we'll get the better of two grades out of the first draft and the revisions. It makes me less nervous about revising, because I don't have to worry about changing something and maybe losing points (which can be an issue if you start with a good grade, because obviously you don't want to mess anything up, but you do have to do the revisions). One thing I need to do is make some of the plot stuff more obvious. I was worried about being too obvious, but I may have gone in the other direction. It's easy to do because of course I know all the backstory, so then I forget that the reader of course knows none of it and only knows what's in the script. So I need to work on that. But I'm not going to go overboard on the revisions, my grade is great already, way better than I was expecting, and I have other classes to worry about instead.

So, that was good. Handed in the 235 exam...tomorrow I'm planning to hopefully get the treatment for the final project done, the first draft at least. Or at least get a good idea for it, I feel pretty stumped right now. I mean, for the midterm project I ended up going through three ideas...but here I'm having trouble coming up with a scenario I think would a) be interesting, and b) fill 15 pages. Ahhhh...also I want to start the 235 problem set...then Sunday I guess I'll maybe start studying for 240. MAYBE. I think it's open notes/book again, so I don't plan to study as intensely...but the stuff we've been doing lately is hard, so I do want to review properly. Nnngh, so much to do this week...ahhh, it goes in cycles--one week is dreadful, then the next week I have almost nothing. Oh well.

My jeans seriously need a wash, though...the plaster got a bit messy...it's not bad, but they have some streaks of plaster on them, and lots of clay and plaster dust. I wore a shirt I got free at Fall Fling my freshman year, because I knew we'd be doing plaster, so I'm not too fussed that that has plaster all over it. It does, though. *laughs*

Hmmm, I think I'm gonna just goof off tonight...I feel like taking a break. Maybe go hunting for Naruto fic, I was talking about some characters and stuff with Tika and it put me in the mood, haha.

See, she was saying how she just never really likes villain characters, and I agree with her in the sense that if a character hurts others or behaves like a sociopath, I find them unlikeable...but I sometimes find them interesting to write about. I mean, even my own villains often squick me out. *laughs*

The exception to this is Naruto. Actually, most of the Naruto villains have huge numbers of fans anyway, but I do like some of them. This may be because Kishimoto makes very compelling characters, and because I like the art style, and because they're often fun to write. Also some of them don't do many villainous things on-screen. Also, we usually see them when they're just fighting the heroes, and since all the characters are ninja, that usually doesn't seem very evil. So, even though on an intellectual level I know their backstories and all the evil deeds they do, just from what they do on-screen...sometimes they don't SEEM very evil. They seem more lulzy (that's the other factor--the lulz. Naruto villains often have hilariously bad plans, and are otherwise very comical for all the wrong reasons. It's part of my crackish love for Naruto. XD). So yeah.

Kisame, for example--we know almost nothing about him. Apparently he killed daimyos or something?  Sort of like a, you know, ninja might do. So...yeah. Oh yeah and when he was supposed to capture Naruto he suggested chopping off Naruto's legs so he couldn't run away. Except that he never actually did it, and it kind of came off as a little over-the-top because he's a giant shark, so...yeah, it ended up being ridiculous and lulzy instead. I wonder if Naruto's legs would just grow back, because of the kyuubi. XD

So, yeah, Kisame has so little pagetime and/or backstory that he's just this giant blue shark-man who, unlike most of the other villains, is just this chill guy who thinks life is kind of hilarious. He's so entertaining! And he's a SHARK! ...so, yeah, it's this weird thing where I just can't take him seriously as a villain.

Itachi is an interesting case, in that I find him very interesting as a character--there's a lot to analyze there, and I love to analyze. Also I do have a thing for big brother characters, haha. But at the same time what he's done is horrible. Of course I also think he's batshit insane, soooo...but yeah, I find him interesting. And I can like...almost see how he could maybe be good-ish. I have a thing for redeemed/dark but good deep down characters, too...he's an odd case, because apparently he's supposed to be a good guy, and I only found him at all likeable (or even all that interesting) post-reveal (although I did find him to be an interesting villain, I didn't find him sympathetic or lulzy. Although he does have very pretty eyelashes...).

Orochimaru is also an interesting case, because he, too, is a character I find ultra-lulzy. I also like him in contrast to a lot of Naruto villains, and villains in general. It's become this rather common thing for villains to have angsty pasts and sympathetic backstories and all this complicated reasons why they do what they do, and Orochimaru is just...it's like he's evil for the lulz! He's just so blatantly, unapologetically evil that it's weird, and lulzy, and fun to write. He's just so over the top! I can't take him seriously as a villain either. Still, I didn't really like him until I wrote him...and I still mostly write/like him just because Kabuto is one of my two favorite characters, and you just can't write Kabuto without ever writing Orochimaru. I mean it's just a major part of his backstory.

Hidan and Kakazu...again, they're just so over-the-top!  They have no redeeming features at all (Orochimaru has this, but not quite the same way--what I like with Orochimaru is...like that time when Kakashi is all 'so it's just your greed and megalomania!' and he actually says 'pretty much...' I mean he's just so blatant!  He doesn't even pretend to have a reason!  Plus he has the mad scientist thing, so it's just hilariously ridiculous), they're basically designed to just be OMG EVIL. It's like Kishimoto is going 'see? they're SO EVIL!  Shikamaru is CLEARLY a hero for killing them!  It was clearly okay!  THEY WERE SO EVIL GUYS SERIOUSLY' I mean it's just...hilarious. Refuge in audacity.

Plus they're...well, they're comical. We only see them very briefly, and they act like complete loons. Hidan is all getting chopped up and complaining, Kakuzu is like 'whatever...' and they argue like an old married couple. They're so clearly evil sociopaths, but they're so RIDICULOUS!  It just becomes hilarious. The moment when Hidan's head gets chopped off but he doesn't die seems to be intended to be horrific--based on the other characters' facial expressions and the little shouty teaser-text thing that's all 'HIS HORRIFIC TRANSFORMATION' or whatever--but it's just so bizarre and kind of silly that it ends up being hilarious and cracktastic. So, I like them in a cracktastic way. Also I do find the dynamic between them totally hilarious as well. They're just...they're just so BIZARRE. It's just pure crack.

And then of course there's Kabuto, one of my two favorite characters. ...I love many Naruto characters in a crack way, but I actually find Kabuto to be an interesting character in a non-crack way. We don't really know much about his backstory, but not like with Kisame and some others, where it's just totally unknown--we have a basic idea, but there are just missing pieces (also the timeline is whack, but that's another thing entirely...), and it's just kind of fascinating. Why does he do what he does? It's really not clear. Also I have a thing for characters who are really, really loyal. But I also find Kabuto's dynamic with Orochimaru interesting in that they're both these horrible people who are basically using each other, and they totally know that. Like...there's a...smirky thing. They both smirk so much, seriously. It's like smirkville 24/7. BUT ANYWAY. There's this level of distrust and they're using each other, but at the same time there's this weird loyalty going on too. It's this completely twisted relationship that I find kind of fascinating, because it's like...why?  Why do they do what they do?  Most of the Naruto villains either have reasons given through complicated, angsty backstory, or they have no reasons and/or the reasons are kind...yeah. Like Deidara--he just likes blowing shit up, and that's it. Orochimaru sort-of has this, but there's also a level with him and Kabuto where it seems like there's a reason, but it's just not clear what the heck it is. That makes them interesting to write (well, mostly it makes Kabuto interesting to write. *laughs*). So I don't find them likeable, but I find them very fun to write.

I also kind of love most of the Naruto characters in a crackish way. I mean there's so much lulz to be had there. So I'm kind of affectionate towards them all. *laughs* Maybe because it's a manga about a ninja kid who wears orange and like...wants to lead Ninja Town. It's just kind of this sort of silly premise. I do find Naruto to have a lot of drama, and some intense storytelling, and characters that compelling...but it ALSO has this cracky, lulz side. there are a lot of things I like only in a more serious way, but I really love the fact that with Naruto, there's this whole other side to enjoy.

So, I think that's why I like so many of the Naruto villains--for the lulz and the crack. But Kabuto specifically is a character I like even in a more serious way. Mostly because I find him interesting. It's just not clear at this point what his real motives are, or even where he comes from or what exactly has happened to him in his life. There are all these missing pieces, but there isn't like a blank like with Kisame, there's this implied past that we just don't quite know about. Which is, well, interesting. So, that's why. I mostly am not a fan of villains, though...unless they make for good crack. XD

I'm trying to think if there's any other villain pairing that I ship...I don't think there is. I mean, I'll read a lot of Naruto pairings, and I think Kakuzu/Hidan is kind of lulzy and entertaining, but it's not a ship I'm really attached to. I guess technically I ship it, but I see it as being preeetty much canon anyway. XD But yeah. I don't think I even ship any hero/villain pairings...except Sakura/Kisame, for the lulz and the crack. Also blue and pink look good together, AMIRITE!?  They could have purple-haired babies!  Except that genes don't work like paint colors. *laughs* But yeah, this is the only fandom where I really ship the villains and actively write them as the main characters of stuff. Only with Naruto...*laughs*

Nnng...I'm gonna goof off now. Ohhhh yeah...

WTF!?

2009-11-13T06:03:19Z

So, my screenwriting professor just posted to the course conference that our treatments for our FINAL PROJECT are due NEXT TUESDAY. WTF!? We've only just started workshopping our midterm projects this week! What the hell!? Great, now I need to do that this weekend...argh, my is this so soon!? I mean, I know it's only the first treatment, but still, I need to think of an idea for this now, and this project is REALLY hard. The specifications:

It's something called a 'two-fer', meaning it can only ever have two characters on screen.

It must take place in a single room for the entire thing (no flashbacks!), and the two characters must not leave the room at any point.

And it has to be 15 minutes long.

I can think of some one-room scenarios, but I'm not sure I could stretch them to be fifteen minutes. I asked in class, and the professor said that the characters don't have to be alive the entire time (...my classmates kind of cracked up laughing when I asked...but my first thought was--some kind of locked-room-ish murder. It's dramatic...^_^;;;;). So...I mean, I could go with 'torture/interrogation scene', but for 15 minutes? Without ANY flashbacks?  It's just harder to reveal information with only two characters and no setting other than one room. The backstory info would all have to be revealed through either stuff in the room or dialogue. I mean...this is only the second script we've EVER WRITTEN. You'd think the SECOND EVER script we're writing would be a LITTLE simpler...or at least not be so restricted. Man....

I could see a scene having a lot of conflict, and culminating with one character killing the other or something...but I don't know if I could fill a whole fifteen minutes with that. Even with my first script, it was hard getting it all the way to fifteen pages. That's longer than you'd think. I mean I think I could SO EASILY write a short story with these specs, or even a short piece with mostly dialogue--it could go either ultra-dramatic or more towards the comedy end. But a film...I just don't have many ideas right now, and now all of a sudden I need one RIGHT NOW. Arrrrgh...well, Kori and Tika and I were planning to go into Nadick this Saturday and do some writing--maybe I can come up with an idea then. At least I'd have people to bounce it off of...that'll be a good time to get that done, I guess. Ahhh...can't get too stressed out. One step at a time...

Let's see...I have a psych assignment coming up soon-ish (we're going to go to the Child Study Center and then do some sort of paper about that, so I can't start it yet)...after Thanksgiving break the research paper is due, but I'm planning to do that over Thanksgiving break...problem sets this week as usual, too...nnngh, I had a brief period with less work, and now everything is intense again. Fuuuuck...ahhh, I need an idea for this...

Writing a 15-minute script kind of felt like writing a long one-shot, really...and I usually only write pieces of that length with characters I have from longer stuff. So...my inclination is to use characters I already have, but in a new setting and with an unrelated plot. I did that with the first script, sort of by accident (it just kinda...happened, and then I liked it too much not to. ^_^;;;)...I did enjoy it, though. I mean I just am NOT interested in coming up with a whole world just for one 15 minute script (when I come up with a set of characters, a world usually does come with them--in terms of backstory, at least). I mean a character's backstory really is a whole world. I don't want to make a new character whole cloth for this one thing, because I just...maybe it's because I write a lot, but I don't like creating characters for one tiny thing, because then they don't mesh well with other characters I have, and I don't end up using them again.

...scenarios with two characters in a room...really, the obvious ones that jump out at me are sex, murder, and interrogation. I wrote a short story for Short Narrative in my first semester first year which took place all in one apartment...there were flashbacks, though, and as one character was dead the entire time it wouldn't be possible to get across what happened without a flashback...but a story LIKE that, about a murder taking place in a small space and then what happens afterward, might be interesting.

I also think it might work well to FORCE the characters into a single room--like, the room is locked from the outside, so they MUST remain inside it. It brings more conflict in, and I think it makes sense too, because if there's a high tension conflict, one character is likely to try to leave...and in this assignment, they aren't allowed to. So why not make them LITERALLY not allowed to?  I'm not sure if characters speaking from offstage but not onscreen are allowed...otherwise 'two characters locked in by a third character' could work. Like...Char A locks Char B and Char C into a room...TO MURDER THEM. ...but in an overblown and comical way?  *laughs*  The story could end with them finally getting the door open, and it turns out it was just jammed or something, Char A actually forgot to lock it. Also Char A dies by the door hitting him in the head or something. ...okay that might be sort of veering into black comedy, buuuut anyway.

I mean...man, I can think of scenarios, it's the length that worries me. Stretching it to fill 15 pages...that worries me. I need a scenario that can be arbitrarily lengthened if need be, because with the first script, it came up short but I was easily able to add in a scene--something that had previously happened offscreen. Here...there is nothing 'off screen' because everything is in this room, so I need an expandable plot rather than just more background material. Nnnng...

Bleeeh...I hate when a professor dumps a huge assignment on you just all SUDDENLY. Although, this is probably in the syllabus somewhere, but man, I didn't memorize it!  I do actually read the psych syllabus frequently, but that's so I know which readings to do each week. Big assignments are less likely to surprise me there (although they still do ocassionally...I have...little memory for things written in margins, apparently. ^_^;;; Well, the assignment was written in a different column than the readings, and I wasn't looking for it specifically, so I didn't notice it...I got it done in plenty of time, though. Only got a B+ on it, but that's fine. The research paper will be even better!  ...I hope. Heh.)...

Maybe I just feel so annoyed by this because I don't like my screenwriting class that much, so having assignments for it annoys me...well...this Saturday will be devoted to getting an idea for this and working on the treatment, I suppose...NNNNGH. I need to work on problem sets, too...ARGH. Also, I'm not sure what sculpture will be like tomorrow, we're starting the plaster molds--I don't know if we'll have something we need to do for Tuesday. I hope not, I have enough due next week right now...ARGH ARGH ARGH. Bleh. Stupid homework.

Two people in a room, two people in a room...rooms people can be trapped in...prison cell, interrogation room, accidentally locked from the outside or jammed lock...reasons two people would be in a room...hiding from someone? Lovers, enemies...I feel like the two characters would need to be pretty strong for this one--there would have to be some deep conflict between them.

Or it could be a plot about the two characters trying to escape the room, and repeatedly failing...and then they start bitching at each other, I guess?  I need a reason for them to be IN the room in the first place...hmmm...I want at least one character who'll be likely to bitch at the other. If they're both stoic, it would get boring...should they know each other already?  Or were they randomly shut in a room together? Nnnngh...such a specific prompt...

Bleeeh...I suppose I'll worry about it on Saturday. Tonight is for sleeping, and tomorrow I have class and stuff, so I won't worry about it then either. HMPH.

Also, I didn't actually get many more words on my nano today...but I DID wrap up an important bit, and I finally finished the overly-long Chapter 7, so I got some stuff done. I hate to fall behind on my wordcount goals...but I'm pretty far ahead. My target for today would be 24k, and I'm just over 35k. So...11k ahead. That's not so bad.

Chapter 8 is when they finally find the Instrumentality...hmmm, I wonder if I've established God enough...this is when he disappears, so for that to be effective, I want him to have been pretty much a feature of the story so far...

But it's annoying, because he's not there unless I'm writing from Larc's POV, so sometimes I end up awkwardly writing like...a mixed POV, where it's sort-of from Ayric's POV but God is in there and Larc sometimes gets a POV as well. It's messy, but it works for now...ahhh...I don't know if I've really established their characters well enough for the transition moment to work properly...also this is the part of the story I don't have a plot for, haha.

Well...this is the bit where Elliot finds the Resistance and they begin actively attacking the Empire, but I'm not sure what that will entail. Or even how long it'll be. I mean...Larc and co. are searching for what to DO with the Instrumentality, but I'm not entirely sure how they'll figure that out. Elliot and co. eventually find this information as well...somehow. Oh yeah and I need to kill the mentor. Elliot's co-heroes turned out...nnn, I've had trouble balancing the two parts of the story, so they haven't had much facetime so far. Really, I've had trouble working with so many characters...a group of four starts getting unweildy. I tend to split the part into a group of two, three if I have to. Once I hit four or five, I start forgetting one character is in the scene, or some of them just don't do as much. It's hard to keep so many characters active at once in the same place without the scene getting messy and dragging. That's why I usually split the party as soon as possible...but here, it really isn't possible. Elliot's party quickly diminshes, but the villains finally max out at four people. Which will be...tricky. Although without God it'll be easier to write, I think, so that's a bonus. man, God even started annoying ME here. *laughs* Poor Larc. Ehhh...

Man, I wish instead of screenwriting I was just doing nano. I actually care about figuring out all the plot problems and stuff for that. Bleeeeh...I'm going to think twice before taking a writing course in the future. Writing for a grade interferes too much with the kind of writing I actually like to do. Which is admittedly haphazard and not always good and not always consistent and rarely timely...but I feel like the writing I do on my own has made me grow more as a writer than anything I've ever written for a writing class. In terms of fiction writing, I mean, I don't really write essays outside of class. But even there...some of the best argument essays I've read were in fandom--fans can get pretty intense debating a point. They make great use of citations, too. I feel like writing is something I've really learned by doing it on my own, and by reading tons of it, not by sitting in a classroom taking notes.

This is the second writing course I've taken at college, and I'm starting to wonder how writing is usually taught. Short Narrative and Screenwriting have both involved a) reading/watching stuff and "discussing" it in class, and b) writing things and then workshopping them. But even though the professor will say that such-and-such piece of writing is great, or check out this skilled used of whatever, it's just...it's not like other courses I've taken. For example, in cs235, we go over examples in class, we learn the basic principles, and we do problem sets to practice using what we've learned, and I feel like I really do learn a lot. With the writing courses I've taken, I've ended up feeling like I read some stuff that I didn't really enjoy and had no desire to emulate, wrote some stuff without really knowing what I was supposed to be writing or how I was supposed to be going about the process, and then workshopped without really understanding how to become a better writer. Maybe I'm just a bad learner or something, or maybe it's a teaching style/learning style mismatch, but I don't feel like I've learned much by taking writing courses. Mostly what I've done is used skills I already had to do the assignments. If I didn't already spend a lot of time writing and thus have some idea of how to do it, I feel like I would never have been able to do Short Narrative, or to do screenwriting at all. Whereas in cs111, for example, I had NO IDEA how to write programs, but by the end of the course, I was able to write my own programs. And then in cs230, by the end of that, I was able to come up with an idea, implement it, and create a working program (it didn't work exactly like I wanted it to, but it did WORK. I wrote a short, pretty crappy game that didn't QUITE function as I wanted, but I was able to create a GUI and make SOME of the functions work). The point is, at the end of the course I had skills I didn't previously have at ALL. Before taking CS courses, I could not have just sat down one day and written a program.

Now, maybe writing programs is different than writing fiction--there are certain special skills that must be learned, and a certain way it has to be done or it won't work at all, and just trying different things and looking at other programs doesn't tell you why certain things are working. But with my CS courses, I feel like at the end of the course, I've known things and had skills that I didn't have at the beginning. In Short Narrative, I don't know that I really gained anything...yeah, I learned more about writing short stories, I guess, but I wrote them pretty much the way I would have if I had sat down one day and decided to start writing short stories. Having deadlines caused me to write when I might have delayed on my own, but the course did not change the way I approach writing, and I don't feel I gained any new insight into writing. I don't feel I learned anything. I produced some writing, but that's something I do on my own anyway. In screenwriting...I feel like, if I had on my own read some scripts and then tried to write one, the result would have been pretty much the same as what I did for class. Because I don't feel like the class specifically taught me any new skills--I feel like I used what I already knew and looked at examples to imitate. Which...well, it has NOT been my experience with other classes, in college or in high school. In other courses I've taken, I've gotten the clear sense that at the end of the course, I have skills and knowledge I did NOT have at the beginning (with some exceptions. There are always bad classes, I guess). So I don't think this is just me being a bad student, because I DO feel that I've gained knowledge and skills in other classes. For example, the way I write programs was changed by taking cs230. But the way I write fiction was NOT changed by Short Narrative or Screenwriting. And I feel like typically in a course, there is intended to be some sort of change via learning. I guess I just feel like I didn't get much out of Short Narrative or Screenwriting. I don't think I'll take any more writing courses...I feel like I gain more skill by writing on my own and reading good writing. Just by practicing and stuff. I may not be a great writer, but I do think I have improved my skills over time.

However, I do think that writing is something that can be taught. I know many people see writing (and a lot of art) as this magical thing where Inspiration just arrives to you and you Get An Idea and you're all Artistic, but I see writing as something that you learn. You learn by reading, and by writing. And I think that some of it can be taught. You can't teach someone how to come up with an idea, maybe, but you can teach them how to edit, how to examine a story for plot holes, how to examine prose to see if it's working...some of it is practice and getting a 'sense' of it--but think about, say, riding a bicycle. Once you know how to ride, it all feels automatic, but when you're learning, it's all explicit and you have to think through each step. Driving a car is said to be like that, too. And if you know how to ride a bicycle already, you might be stumped as to how to teach it--you just...do it. You just get on and do it. But it CAN be taught. Much of it is a matter of experience, but guided experience is beneficial.

I don't know...are most writing courses like this, or is this just a random thing that I experienced?  Regardless, I'm not interested in trying another one. BLEH. I mean I feel like completing the assignments and workshopping is pretty much the same as what lots of informal writing communities online do with eachother. Even joining a prompt community and posting work is similar. I just don't see any benefit in the classes I took. Anything I did in them, I could enjoy more and get more out of by doing it on my own time with the writing communities I'm already part of. Meh.

So yeah...that...got off topic a bit. But I was thinking about it, I guess?  Whatever.

Nnn...I need to get the 240 notes from Kori tomorrow...I am SO glad that my only morning class next semester is an 11:10 twice a week. I just...hate waking up in the morning. I hate it so very much. It worries me, because I know that in the real world I'll need to do that to get most jobs, but...man, I don't want to start now. I'm CAPABLE of getting up, but I just hate it, so if my motivation is low...I tend to just...not do it. I think I've only missed my Monday/Thursday classes like two or three times, though. This is the third, I think. Nnnng...from now on I'll make more effort to wake up properly...I just hate it because I have to do it every day, so every day I go to sleep knowing that I'm going to wake up, and be warm and comfortable and wanting more enjoyable, happy sleep, and I can't have it. Instead I have to get up and go outside and go to class and take notes and be intelligent-ish. And, you know, I actually ENJOY 240 and psych once I'm there. If I could magically teleport to class from bed (...assuming the teleporter also provided pants...), I would love that. It's just the act of getting out of bed that's so difficult. I mean, I'm CAPABLE of it, it's just that I never WANT to do it...I'm very lazy, I think...but it's just...well, I really enjoy sleep. It's very pleasant and it makes me happy and when I wake up in the morning and realize I still have more time to sleep, I am just SO HAPPY. It's like one of the best parts of my day.

...I wonder if that's a bad thing...is it a bad sign that sleep is my favorite part of my day?  I mean...it's not like I hate my daily life right now or something, it's just that I really enjoy sleep and I only get that 'partly awake but knowing I don't have to get up' feeling in the morning. Once a day, that's it. And most days, I can't enjoy that feeling...it makes me sad, because it's so good...it's like...I don't even know. Like...I don't know, like if your favorite breakfast food EVER is cereal, but on approx four days out of seven, you aren't allowed to eat it, and must instead eat something you don't like. Or nothing at all, I guess. I mean it's just so disappointing. Even going to sleep earlier wouldn't help, since it's specifically that 'just woke up but don't have to get up' feeling I like--and I really do wake up at around the same time every morning, regardless of when I go to sleep. It's usually...between 6:30 and 7:30, typically. Apparently my body was at some point trained to awaken at that time (well, in high school I got up at 6:30, and over the summer at 7, and my alarm goes off at 8, so I feel like I gradually was conditioned to wake up before my alarm so I can shut it off before it can start ringing...). But even if I've had plenty of sleep, getting up is still unpleasant. It's just this feeling of total security and comfort and peacefulness. In the rest of my life, I have places I have to go, I have stuff I need to do, I can't sit still, I twitch and tic, there are things that bother me, or I'm in spaces that make me uncomfortable...but in my bed in the morning, it's just me, comfortable and relaxed and not doing anything. It's a state of ultra-peacefulness. Meditation doesn't do it for me; sleep does.

Actually, that reminds me of something else I've been thinking about for like all semester...there's this woman in both my 240 class and my 235 class. There are a bunch of people in both my classes, actually--I keep getting confused about who's in only one...there's so much overlap. They're both required for the CS major, so maybe it's not surprising...but anyway. Her name is Lauren, I think?  She's a friend of Kori's. I usually get to class a bit early, and almost always before she does in any case, so I sit down or whatever, right? And when she comes in, she usually sits near-ish to me, because Kori usually sits near-ish to me, and she usually sits near Kori...the three of us end up sitting near each other (she was in a class with me last semester, too...230, I guess, that's the only CS class I took last semester). Which is fine, she's nice and I like her. I don't know her very well, so she's not a close friend, but we're aquainted-ish and I like her.

BUT.

We have 235 in the hour before lunch, and 240 in the morning when many people are in a rush and have skipped breakfast. So in 240, lots of people bring something to eat with them. Which is usually okay, because I sit in the second or third row in the middle, and the class space is bigger than the number of people, so usually no one is nearby me except Kori. I always have a seat next to me to put my bag on, as well, but it's not necessary anyway because we have few enough students that there are tons of empty seats. So, usually the eating isn't so bad--they aren't close enough for me to hear them and be distracted. Sometimes people bring in strong-smelling things, but it's usually not terrible. I can deal.

BUT.

Lauren sometimes brings in like toast or something, but sometimes...not every time, but sometimes...she brings in an apple. And eats it. Slowly. Bite by bite. Over the course of 20-30 minutes, during which my concentration tanks and I absorb very little of the lecture. She usually eats one in 235, more rarely in 240, probably because she's eating breakfast foods mostly at that time, I guess.

I know it sounds really stupid. Seriously, I realize that. There's a reason I usually don't tell people about specific aspects of my Sensory Processing Disorder: they sound stupid. I do mention the hand-touching, mostly because that one comes up enough and is bad enough that I am more concerned with people not touching me than I am with them not thinking I'm crazy or stupid or whatever. I mean it's like AAAAAH. The other day I was eating lunch with Kat and Elizabeth (who I keep thinking is named Lily for some reason.  I have no idea why...), and Elizabeth had this thing that's like activated by putting it on your hand (a Chocobo toy...long story), and we were wondering whether it was heat-operated or if it was the electrical single in your skin (I think the touchpad on my keyboard works with the electrical single, because it doesn't work if, for example, you cover your finger with a tissue and use it. It's clearly not the pressue, because a tissue wouldn't stop that, and the tissue is thin enough not to stop heat. But I digress), so long story short she ended up touching my arm suddenly, and I was like 'DON'T TOUCH ME DON'T TOUCH ME' because I wasn't expecting it and it really startled me so I wasn't prepared and couldn't give a calmer reaction. She was kind of like 'o...kay...?', so then I was like 'no it's this thing', because I mean you kind of have to explain WTF is going on after that. Mostly people are okay after I tell them that it's not personal, I just find it painful (I usually say painful because 'physically unpleasant/uncomfortable in ways I can't describe but which make me want to scream' is too long). Actually mostly they apologize for having touched me in the first place, which I feel awkward about, because they didn't know or anything, you know? I mean I'm not trying to make them feel bad, I just want them to understand that it's not that I dislike them or anything, it's just this thing, you know? But anyway mostly it's fine. Maybe because it sounds plausible. and also, it's pretty reasonable to ask people not to do something to you.

But anyway, that's really the one thing I usually mention about it, because that's a specific scenario that a) comes up often, b) is very distressing, and c) is one people are likely to believe/understand/be willing to not do. I almost never tell people any other things that give me sensory issues. It's just...I mean...it's awkward, you know? Because people have a right to do what they do and it's not their fault that I find it painful. It's not their fault and it's not their responsibility to do anything about it. I just need to cope, you know?  I mean my dad tells me that in the real world I need to just cope (I still say that at home, at least, I feel I can ask for at least a little boundary respecting, because if there's any place I think I have a right to feel safe it's my home. I mean, my usual thing is that I just want permission to leave the room if someone is doing something that I find distressing. That's all I want. I just want to be able to flee a distressing experience without being made to feel guilty about it, and with everyone understanding that it's not personal, I'm not angry or anything, it's just that something is occuring that I find difficult to deal with. My dad has...gotten better about this. Eating dinner with the family is still...I try to eat really fast and then leave. But it's awkard, so usually I clean up all the dishes that are done being used, because it lets me stand up and get away from the table somewhat. In the summer I would go outside and take a walk until I figured enough time had passed for my parents to be done eating. But some foods are hard to eat quickly...).

So...I just don't say anything, usually. BUT. It is difficult. It sounds stupid, I know, but to me it really does interfere with my life.

I mean while she's eating her apple I just am unable to concentrate. It's like my brain just freaks out. It's the suspense, too. There's this tension of knowing the next bite is coming, and knowing it's going to hurt, and being unable to do anything about it, and just waiting. And I start thinking 'why can't she just be done with the stupid apple!? why did I even come to class?  I wish I wasn't here right now'. I don't think I've missed any 235 classes so far, but almost every class, I wish I had skipped it. It's that bad. It's not so bad on Wednesdays, because we have class in a different room and she sits in a different row than me.

I mean on days when she actually sits next to me I've started just moving over a seat. I don't want to be rude, but I just need to move at least that far away. I mean I'm not going across the room. And then when Kori comes in I tell her I saved her a seat, so it looks like I just moved over for that. And if anyone asks, I can just say that we usually sit in that order, and because I have OCD, I feel more comfortable when things are in the same order. Which is totally true, by the way, it's just not the primary reason. OCD, people know about, they believe it, they see it as just a weird quirk. It's more socially acceptable. So far, no one has asked, and as far as I know, no one has noticed. I mean I jsut had to do SOMETHING. It's not as bad if I'm at least a little farther away.

I have different strategies...I plug my ear on that side. I can still hear the lecture, and at least I can concentrate a little. It doesn't totally block the sound, but it's better than nothing. It doesn't look rude, hopefully, because it's easily disguised as me just leaning my head on one hand.

It sounds so stupid. But it seriously is a big problem for me. I get anxious about it. It's that way with meals at home, too--leading up to dinner, I start to get really, really anxious. When I sit down at the table, I get even more anxious. I just spiral into this cloud of freaking-out-ness, because I know that a painful experience is coming and I feel powerless to stop it.

I went to this lecture thing the other day, and someone sitting behind me was eating something. Eating very quietly, in a totally acceptable way. But I was just in my head screaming and wishing I was anywhere else. I just wanted to get up and run out of the room. It's that bad. I'm not making this up or exaggerrating, it is seriously that bad.

Mostly I don't eat with people. It's not so bad in the dining hall..usually. There's background noise, so it cuts down on some of the sound (it's bad at home when we eat at the table instead of in front of the TV, because it's just so quiet. I know it's terrible or whatever to eat in front of the TV, but for me it completely alleviates all the anxiety and distress of eating meals with my family, so that I'm actually able to enjoy spending that time with them. I mean I really love my family and I enjoy eating meals together...just...only when it's in a setting where I'm not flipping out because of sensory issues), and people aren't RIGHT next to me usually--when it's with just a few people, usually we're sitting across from each other or around a table, so it's a little better. But it depends on the food. With apples, or oranges...I eat quickly and make an excuse to leave. I just can't stay. I can't do it. I have to go through it in class, I refuse to do it on my own time. Mostly, this isn't a problem. Last semester, with Shoshana, she was one of the few people I actually told about it--I finally just told her that if she was going to eat an orange, I couldn't eat with her. And she was fine with that and just said she'd eat it later, when I was gone. And that just...made me really happy. I felt less like a bother, or a freak. I mean it just feels so stupid, you know?  Like I'm just being stupid and melodramatic. But it's just...I mean I can't help it. But mostly it's not a problem.

Usually I just avoid situations that I know will produce some kind of sensory overload or distress, but the classroom is one of those situations where I am required to sit in a confined space for an hour. I can't leave. I could get up to go the bathroom, I guess, but I'd miss parts of the lecture, and I need to take notes and stuff.

Once she finishs the apple, it's okay. After a few minutes my sensory system goes back to normal and I feel calm again. I really hate when she gets like halfway through eating it, then stops to take notes for a while, so I relax again, and then she goes back to eating it and I'm all AHHHH. It's more drawn-out that way. But several bites in a row cause more overload at once...man, it's kind of a no-win situation.

But it's also a situation where I just can't say anything. I mean I just CAN'T. She has a right to eat in class if she wants to, there's no rule against it or anything. and I have no right to try to stop her (man, even if I did I wouldn't try, that would jsut be so...I mean that's kind of a jerkass thing to do, you know?). It's not her fault, she's not doing anything bad or wrong or anything.

But it does make me appreciate that in high school you weren't allowed to eat in class. people still did sometimes, but mostly they didn't. Man, I miss that...if I was ever a teacher, I would HAVE to disallow eating in my class. I mean, man, I can't even concentrate on someone else's lecture while a person eats an apple, let alone give one.

That's the example that's been on my mind this semester. I mean it's just something that happens almost every day. I have class with this woman EVERY DAY. Three of those classes are 235 classes. She typically eats an apple, but not always. It's only about three hours a week on average, but...I just hate it so much. I just fucking hate it. It makes it hard to concentrate and take notes and all.

It's little things, sometimes, you know? I remember reading the smoking thread on community last semester (community is like this big forum thing), which is ostensibly put up by some org that tries to support quitting smoking or something, and was about why you do or don't smoke. so, I was bored, I read through it a bit, and so many smokers were all upset that they can't smoke in buildings and stuff, and one woman mentioned how she hates it when people "passive-agressively" cough when smokers walk by. I cough when I just go into an area where someone has been smoking recently--the smell of the smoke makes me feel like I'm choking. It's horrible. Walking behind a smoker on a path when they're going too fast for you to pass them (and/or they're walking two abreast and taking up the whole path in an area where you can't go around. I HATE that) is TERRIBLE. I usually end up pulling my shirt collar up over my mouth and breathing through it, because that helps. I don't care if it looks stupid--I cannot deal with feeling like I'm suffocating every time I take a breath. Also I think it's a bit silly to feel that you have a right to pollute a public air space with chemicals known to be toxic and, in fact, cancer-causing. I mean seriously. I know it's a difficult habit to quit, but I don't understand the indignation about smoking being banned in restaurants and stuff. It produces DANGEROUS CHEMICALS. I mean we KNOW that it is actively dangerous to other people. It's the production of toxic smoke in air other people have to breath!

And I think many people would agree about not wanting to breath in cigarette smoke. Not just because it's toxic, but also because it stinks, it tastes nasty, it makes them choke. And I agree. But to be honest?  Plenty of other sensory experiences--like hearing someone eat an apple--are things that make my brain freak out. Except that smoking is bothersome to many people. My problems are only for me. So I have no right to complain about them in public, out loud, to other people. I'd probably be considered a bitch if I did. I mean, it WOULD be annoying.

But damn, do I hate going to cs235 class sometimes. And I actually love that class. I love the professor, and the topic is difficult but kind of fun. But every day when she eats her apple...I wish I had skipped class that day.

So yeah, what I was saying to start out was...the world is sometimes a distressing place. It's filled with situations I have to run away from, and some that I can't avoid at all. The hours in the morning where I'm half-asleep...no one can do anything to me. Also because I'm half-asleep, I'm not ticcing, so I can't even hurt myself. I've been having this problem lately, where...errr, it's kind of weird, but...

See, I pray before I go to bed. I started doing this months ago, because I wanted to, but it became this thing and now there's a sequence of prayers that I have to say in the right order before I can go to bed. I mean I also pray--I pray after doing the 'required' prayers. But anything that I do repeatedly tends to become ritualized and eventually 'required'. It's not a big deal--I usually end up saying them super fast because otherwise I sometimes mess up and then I have to do it all over again.

But anyway, I'm Catholic, and before praying we make the Sign of the Cross. Basically you put one hand at about the center of your chest--your left hand--and with your right hand you tap your forehead, then your other hand, then your right shoulder, then your left shoulder. While you do that, you say 'in the name of the Father' (tap forehead) 'and of the Son' (tap chest) 'and of the Holy Spirit' (while tapping shoulders) 'Amen' (fold hands together at center of chest). It's an opening to prayer, and a closing to prayer. Like a ritual to get you in the praying mindset, I guess. It can be very soothing, I guess because it kind of signals your mind 'now we're praying', so it puts you in a more calm mindset.

Except. It's already a ritual, so...they tend to become ritualized. Which wouldn't be so bad, except this one got kind of labor-intensive--it combined with this other weird thing I've had for a while. It sort of started with...man, I'm not even sure. It's like--this odd noise. Kind of this gulp-ish sort of sound, made with the mouth closed, at the back of the throat. It's fairly quiet, but audible if you're standing next to me. It's...well, odd. This also combined with this other thing--I'm not sure how, really...at some point when I was younger (this has to be at least a few years, at this point...this one has hung around. And evolved...-__-;;;), I started doing this thing where I saw something that bothered me or was gross or something, and I was like 'ew'. Except that became a ritual response to seeing something distressing (distressing in a tic-activating way, which is sometimes different from normal-distressing, but they tend to overlap...most normal-distressing things become tic-activating eventually). And then it turned into this weird high-pitched squeak made at the top back of the throat, which is actually hard to make, so it doesn't always work, and then I have to do it AGAIN, which is awkward in places where there are other people. I try to do it quietly, but I worry that it's noticeable. And there's sometimes a tongue movement with it. It's this weird...thing. It's like...the stimuli produces a feeling of distress, and the desire to do the tic, but weirdly the tic is almost somewhat comforting. The distress tends to alleviate after it. It's like a very odd self-soothing ritual. But anyway, that sometimes combines with the gulp thing.

And then it combined with this other thing. You know that kind of cartoon gesture where the character makes a mistake and then slaps himself in the forehead?  Well, that kind of became this...thing. If I would make a mistake--say, I would write a word wrong, and then before I could erase it, I would have to do the gesture. Except it then become even more tic-ish and ritualized, so it became this very fast two-fingered tap of the forehead (hard enough that it kind of stings a little), combined with the gulp and this sort of downward head jerk, except that it MUST be done at the exact right moment--there's this precise timing. I mean not REALLY, but there's this feeling of 'that time I did it correctly'. And it must be done over and over until it's 'just right', except this tic is tricky, so it ends up being this volley of head-taps and gulps, and I suspect it must look quite odd. It's also quite time-consuming, but I can't not do it, so I try to do it correctly the first time.

Which turned into a part of the ritual, sort of. Like...I can get into just this flurries of head-tapping, so I try to wait for the right moment. I can kind of feel when it's the right moment, in this weird way. But the gulp has to be timed right too, so there's this moment where I'm waiting for the tap, my hand is in position, and I go through several gulps and headjerks and my hand partly moves up, and then when the right moment is reached, I do the full tap and complete the gesture. Once I'm done I feel a little exhausted, because it takes so much mental effort to get it 'just right'. So anyway, it became this thing.

You can probably see where this is going. The Sign of the Cross involves a forehead-tap. That started to overlap, and now the first movement of the Sign of the Cross is this ticcish thing where it has to be timed properly and it's this volley of headtaps until it's done right, and then the rest of it is done super-fast, like a blur of hand waving. It's...odd. And very, VERY time-consuming. It can take a while to get through the prayers (although they tend to become speeded up as well). And then I have to do it AGAIN at the end. I mean you can pray without the Sign of the Cross, but I can't go to bed without doing the full tic. There are times during the day when I just pray, no Sign of the Cross needed, but at bed the whole ritual must be observed. It's not really a pray, exactly...it's a ritualized tic. The prayer happens after the tic-ritual is out of the way. I can't just do the prayer, the ritual MUST occur.

Except that...well, sometimes...with the OCD...paranoia and anxiety issues appear, and...I read this thing, just in passing in an Oliver Sacks book, where he mentioned a Touretter friend he knew who had put out his eyes with violent ticcing. And...I mean AHHHHH GROSS GROSS GROSS. And, see, yeah, reading something gross activates a tic where I repeatedly slam my fingers into my forehead (not ALWAYS...but the 'made a mistake' tic has partly combined with the 'saw something gross' tic, so I tend to do them together...). And...look, I just have this looming anxiety about missing my forehead and slamming my fingers into my eye. Like seriously. I mean it may sound silly, but the headtap is quite fast. It's like a really hard poke. Like...seriously it's quite forceful. It makes my head hurt sometimes. If I accidentally hit my eye, I probably wouldn't put it out (oh God please let that not be easy to do...it can't be, right?  I mean...it seriously can't be that easy...), but I could hurt myself pretty badly. I think. I'm not gonna test it out, I mean, damn.

I wear glasses, so I've been trying to fend off the anxiety by telling myself that if I missed I would just hit my glasses and it might slam them into my face, but my eyes would be fine. Except...see, there's this thing where if I read about something happening to someone...there's this kind of...involuntary imagining of it happenign to myself. I mean there's like a physical sensation of something happening to my eye. Like a phantom touch. It's...unpleasant. So...I mean this usually only comes up at night, so I try to just go to bed quickly and not think about it, but it's hard. Squeezing my eyes shut really tightly makes the 'phantom touch' effect go away, but also makes my eyes/head hurt because I have to squeeze them quite tightly. Also I sometimes forget and take my glasses off before doing the ritual, and then I realize and it freaks me out. And that increases the need to do the headtap...

I'm not really going anywhere with this, it's just something that was freaking me out a bit lately. So...yeah. Lately that has been a problem. Hopefully it'll just fade away quickly on its own, I REALLY do not need another addition to the headtap ritual, it's complicated enough already. I mean seriously it's really awkward when I'm in full-on 'tap-gulp-headjerk' mode in the middle of a long string in a public space and then someone walks in and I try to stop but I can't always and it's awkward. This happens to me in the dorm bathroom sometimes. I just feel SO embarrassed. I mean I must look like I'm...I don't even know, having spasms or like a seizure involving only my right hand and my head. It's so time-consuming sometimes, and SO embarrassing...luckily it usually comes out when I'm alone. The squeaking tends to appear more in public, which is SO AWKWARD because I have to do it so I try to do it super-quiet, but sometimes it's just...I mean it's hard when it's in a quiet space, too. When I'm alone, like reading a book or something, it's rarely quiet because I'm squeaking, gulping, fidgeting around...and lately slamming my face into the open pages of the book, smelling them, and rubbing my face on them, which, again, is really awkward to do in public. I mean I try to be subtle, but...

Sometimes I feel like I look really strange in public. So...yeah. If you ever see a person who's acting bizarre and like jerking and smelling odd things and tapping at things...yes, they might be seriously mentally ill, but they also might just be a Touretter going about their daily business. I mean I know it looks...odd...and most people's instinct when they see a person behaving in a strange and totally inexplicable manner is to stay away and/or be afraid, but...it's not always something scary? I mean, I know that people almost never ask why. It's like this thing where it seems rude to ask 'why are you smelling that book?', even if the person is totally weirded out by it. And then it's hard to explain, too...but sometimes I wish if people wondered they would just ask. Then I could tell them, and they'd know I wasn't dangerous or anything.

When I worked as a camp counselour, I actually had that conversation with my camp kids...well, they were spending like the whole day around me, so of course they noticed stuff. And some of them asked (kids are less inhibited, maybe?). The staff director told me not to say anything, but I felt like I should tell them SOMETHING. Honestly, I think it would've been unwise not to, because what if one of them went home and mentioned to their parents about the weird counselor who twitches and stuff?  They could've thought I was on drugs or something. better to have an explanation on the table. So I just told them basically that they probably noticed that sometimes I make odd movements (they had. They even noticed ones I hadn't realized I was doing. One of them told me 'yeah, sometimes you do this thing with your face!' and then showed me, and I recognized it--it's a grimace I do. But I hadn't realized I was doing it at camp. It had totally slipped under my radar. It was actually a little funny...a little embarrasing, but a little funny too), so I just said that I have this thing called Tourette's Syndrome, it's something you're born with that has to do with the brain, it's not contagious and it's not dangerous and it doesn't hurt me (well...that was sort of a lie. It CAN be painful. But I felt that wasn't appropriate for me to say). They were actually really okay about it. I mean they didn't even act like they felt awkward, they totally just asked really awkward questions--one of them (the same one who noticed the grimace...I loved her, she was an awesome kid actually) came up with this question, she asked, what if a person had a tic where they shoved their arm out in front of them, and they were standing next to someone on the stairs, and shoved the person down the stairs?  She looked sort of...not exactly joking around, but not worried, so...testing/goofing off-ish. I just said that if I had a tic like that, I would realize something like that could happen and would always be careful not to stand next to a person if that might happen, and I would warn people. I mean, man, after a question like that you have to say SOMETHING. *laughs*  But after that they were fine. We went off and did our next merit badge, and they were pretty much like 'oh, that makes sense' and didn't care. Which is among the better experiences I've ever had talking to people about Tourette's Syndrome. Adults are usually...well, awkward about it. They try to comfort me, or say they're so sorry about my experiences, or whatever. My camp kids were just...well, just like they always were. Jacky (that's the kid who asked the question) would have asked that kind of question about pretty much anything. She just liked saying goofy, somewhat-challenging stuff. It just felt like any other conversation. Much more awkward was the talk we had to have with them about bullying...thaaaat was awkward. especially because we were worried that we might not always spot the bullying in action, and thus might not be able to stop it--that's why we decided to just head the problem off by bringing it up. That was SO much more awkward...well, we were talking about stuff they were doing.

But yeah...this entry got long...also I should be sleeping...but it's been a while since I had a good ramble, I guess?  I suppose I get in a rambling mood sometimes. *laughs*

But yeah...screenwriting, WTF?  Lots to do this weekend...also I think I will hate apples for like the rest of my life. I've developed this like conditioned response, where when I see an apple I kind of flinch. My dad had this thing for a while where he thought it I was exposed to things that distressed me a lot, then I'd get over it...buuuut I think this semester has pretty much proven that wrong, because instead I've developed an even more severe anxiety reaction. Alas...habituation: it doesn't always work. I mean I know it works for some people, but apparently not everyone. Not me, at least. BLEH.

Also I should really update my whiteboard--I put all the stuff I need to do on it so I can cross it off as I go (I LOVE crossing off tasks...*laughs*), but it's like a month old right now, haha...I got out of the habit, I guess. Oops.

nnnn...sleep time now. Sleeep...alas, I have to get up tomorrow morning for a 9:50 class...could be worse, but it's screenwriting...and AHHHHH we're doing my script tomorrow in the workshop group. Last class my group ran out of time before getting to my script, so it was put off till today...see, I'm okay with other people reading my writing, but hearing my writing out loud freaks me the hell out. I just have this panic reaction, I mean I get nauseous and I feel too hot and I just...it's kind of bad. When we first read the first treatments we did, my group actually mentioned that my treatment was good, but could I please stop apologizing while reading it?  I, uh...I've been trying to work on that...it's sort of a defense reaction. It helps stem the anxiety a little, I guess. I just wish we didn't have to read out loud. Even having someone else read it wouldn't help, because it's hearing it out loud that causes the problem. We have to give everyone a copy anyway, so I wish we could just read it silently and then discuss...I know reading it out loud helps you catch problems, but it just makes me have a meltdown. I am SO not looking forward to this class...*shudders*

Dude...EPIC.

2009-11-13T01:13:50Z

The new Naruto chapter is out, and....holy crap. SO MUCH AWESOME. Also, lookin' pretty hot thar, Kisame. Also Mizukage, even though she's only in one tiny panel. Her hair...I love that hair...*laughs*

Also, the chapter was...I mean...actual line of dialogue: 'I've never seen it get so big'. He's talking about his sword. I mean...Kisame/Killerbee: they've been onscreen together for slightly over one chapter, and already they have more subtext than Naruto and Sasuke. I mean...seriously. And Killerbee even told Kisame he has pretty eyes. XDDDD Dude, they would have like...the most macho kids ever. Assuming that bull-octopi and sharks can have kids. Also assuming that two men can have kids. Not that that's ever stopped fandom before. XD

But...Kisame's cloak has come off! NUUUUUUUUU, DON'T DIE KISAMEEEEE! Plus he transformed into his 'monster form', like most of the Akatsuki have done before dying, so...is this...his first and last real fight!? (I don't count the one with Gai because that was a Kisame-clone) Say it ain't so! Hopefully he'll at least get some backstory...like, to explain why he's a shark. Because...seriously. He's a freaking shark. How the heck did THAT happen?

So yeah. EPIC CHAPTER IS EPIC.

(oh yeah, also I worked on my sculpture a little...coincidentally, it is shark related. Sharks. They're kind of freaking awesome. I mean it's still not perfect, but I got the tail fins to connect a bit better, so it looks a little more sharky...meh. Tomorrow we make the plaster molds...hopefully it's good enough.)

Er...lol?

2009-11-12T19:37:44Z

So...I just finished my exam. My supposedly six-hour exam. It took me two and a half hours. Lyyyyyn, wryyyyyy~~~~ Seriously the six hours stressed me out and then it wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. *headdesk* Well...at least I have plenty of time to work on my sculpture now...*laughs*

Giant spiders are apparently more lulzy than I thought?

2009-11-11T04:45:09Z

Wee, I accomplished stuff today! Registered for courses, finished the problem set, did the lab assignment, AND got my notes together for cs235...I'm planning to take the exam Thursday, so tomorrow I'll go over the old problem set solutions and maybe get some snacks. It's a flipping six hour exam, I require that a snack be somewhere close at hand. Also I need to make sure I fill my water bottle before taking it because, again, six hours. WTF. But yeah.

Also! Did some nano writing today! Yesterday I slacked off, and then I wasn't feeling it today...but then giant spiders appeared and I actually had fun writing the scene. A little too much fun...it was supposed to be scary and serious, but it ended up being kind of comical. Really, the whole novel was supposed to be dark and depressing and all, but instead it's kind of...weirdly comical. That happens to me sometimes--sometimes I just have trouble getting the mood in a story right. I'll be trying for dark, creepy drama, but my brain is off in lala land or something and it comes out kind of snarky and ridiculous.

Also I somehow ended up in this digression about how if you see a giant spider you should flee immediatly and call in the National Guard and the army, and probably alert the President because oh God giant spiders they will eat you aaaaaaall! and it got a liiittle weird. But I found it strangely hilarious.

I like this section for Ayric and Larc's character development, as well. Mostly Ayric--this is still character establishment for Larc, his character arc kind of shifts when Bard appears. But Ayric is interesting. He ended up initially fleeing the spiders (and also being way more horrified by them than I expected..although, he's a random farmboy, I guess it makes sense that he'd be all 'AHHHH THE HORROR THE HORROR'), and being kind of totally useless and freaked out. But then he goes back to rescue Larc (who got stolen by giant spiders. He was outnumbered), so I feel he's showing his true heroic nature.

I like that as a contrast to Elliot, too--faced with a crisis, Elliot basically...well, he assumes he knows what the problem is, and the solution he comes up with appears to frequently involving burning things to the ground. In this chapter, he burns an entire city to the ground and kills all the inhabitants except for this one guy who escapes. It's never explained how he did this. I kind of love that, though, that it's like 'well, naturally he was forced to burn the city to the ground' and it's like...he what? How!? So, I like Ayric as a constrast to him--a better way of being a hero. Of course, this is before Ayric's hero traits start fully expressing...but he has innate heroic qualities. Larc does too, but not quite the same way. He has them in the general sense of the word 'heroic', I mean. Not the trait. So yeah.

Also, Larc ended up being kind of badass. He's all 'fuck...giant spiders.' And then he just tries to fight them, even though he's clearly doomed. He's kind of...he flails a lot, but he's pretty badass about stuff when it gets down to it. So, yeah, giant spiders, I had a liiiittle too much fun writing about how insanely horrifying they are and how they'll eat, like, everyone. XD

Mmm...I can sleep in a little tomorrow...YESSSS. Haha, I love sleeping. Maybe I'll write a little more tonight...I'm kind of in the zone now. *laughs* Although...I want Ayric to charge in to fight the spiders without a plan (he seems like the type to just assume he'll figure it out as he goes...*laughs* Not impulsive so much as overly optimistic--there's really no viable plan here)...but I'm not sure how the heck he could succeed. He's not trait-positive yet, so I can't really excuse it that way. Maybe I'll have him sneak away, but in a planless fashion.

He really only finds Larc because he's a hero. He had no way of tracking the spiders. So, Larc is going to be a bit annoyed that he has to be grateful for Ayric's hero traits. Of course, he blames God for not warning them about the spiders in the first place. He has a point there, too...*laughs* Although, since Larc can't die (yet...), he would just...be eaten alive by giant spiders for the rest of, well...until all the spiders had died and stopped producing offspring, I guess. OH GOD THE CREEPY AHHHHH! Seriously that's SO FREAKING CREEPY AHHHH...giant spiders are freaking terrifying...

This is the part that sort of digressed into the narration going on and on about the dangers of giant spiders. I find it strangely hilarious, though...not that it actually is, but I'm tired, so lots of things seem strangely hilarious. *laughs* Anyway...here:

    LARC. LARC, WAKE UP.

    For once in his life, Larc didn’t even have a mental reaction to God’s call. Probably because he was unconscious and had enough spider venom in his system to remain that way for some time.

    LARC, IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU WAKE UP NOW.

    Also he was tied to a large tree branch with thick, sticky spider webbing, so even if he had been awake, he couldn’t have moved or done anything useful.

    LARC?

    Even the best laid plans sometimes go awry. But really, when it’s God whose plan doesn’t work, one has to wonder if maybe he couldn’t have just tried a bit harder.

    Spiders from the colony were spread throughout the surrounding trees. The entire area of the forest seemed to have a translucent white film over it, coating everything, hanging down in shreds. It was like…well, like a hoard of incredibly enormous spiders had decided to live there and had spread webs everywhere. It was extremely difficult to sneak into the area, since the any disruption of the main webs would be noticed by the spiders. Only the bravest would travel into such a place anyway. It had about as many danger cues as you could fit into one area of a forest. Also it was filled with giant human eating spiders. It’s not wise to just waltz into a place like that.

    The reason being that it’s very, very hard to waltz out. It’s also hard to tango out, or to disco dance out. Even walking is likely to be pretty much impossible.

    Reader, I feel I must warn you. If you are walking through a forest—even a pleasant forest, with no slime and plenty of sun—and you come to a place where the trees are covered in yards of white film that looks almost like cotton batting, but sticky and possibly with people wrapped up in little balls here and there, waiting to be eaten…and if that area is empty of any large mammals that you can see…and if there are desicated corpses littering the forest floor in that area…and especially if you see spiders larger than you lurking about in the trees…

    Reader, I advise you to just turn around and leave. Don’t walk into the area. Don’t try to burn the webs—it’ll just make the spiders angry. Don’t run, either—back away slowly and quietly and try not to look tasty.

    Really, if giant carnivorous spiders live in your area, perhaps you shouldn’t take too many walks in the woods without carrying, say, a large machine gun. Or an industrial strength flamethrower. Or perhaps an especially large bomb.

    Seriously. Don’t go to a place like that. Even if you have a machine gun, a flamethrower, and a bomb, you really shouldn’t.

    Unless someone has been captured by the giant spiders. In which case you should probably call the National Guard or the army or some other group of well armed, well trained people who can kill hordes of giant spiders. You may also want to call your local news station. Maybe the President, as well, because if giant spiders are breeding in your area, reader, then they are a threat to everyone. I cannot stress this point enough. Spread the word, and destroy the infestation before they devour you and every other person on your landmass.

    If, of course, your companion has been captured by giant spiders, and you are not carrying your cell phone (or if they have not yet been invented), and you are too far away or too lost to get help…well.

    You’ll probably die trying.

    But I can’t blame you if you say you’d go in anyway.

    Just watch out for the mandibles. And the speed. And being crushed by a spider falling on you. And getting caught in the webs. And getting eaten. And…

    Look, just don’t do it, okay? Seriously.

    And if you must go, at least have a plan.

    Honestly, you’d think a hero would know these things.

[end]

I have no idea what happened, I was writing the bit of narration and then it just sort of...grew. That happens to me sometimes when I want to say 'do not do x', and then I feel the need to stick in lots of caveats and further explanation...also I was just sort of going with it. It got...strange. But I do find it funny. *laughs*

Oh yeah, and...over 32k. Also maybe the plot has appeared again?  Maybe this will pull itself together after all...*laughs*

Whispers of an Unquiet Mind

Again...

Guess who's actually awake this time!

Why do ideas come at this hour of the morning...?

*passes out*

*coughs*

BEST THING EVER OMG

...I'm alive...

FINALLY

So...close...

Must...keep...going...

ARGH FAIL WRRRRY

AHHHH WRRRRRY

Nnngh...

Holy Crap.

Man, I'm busy!

How...unexpected.

Bleeeh...

Hmmmm...

Nnngh...

AAAAAAAGH

So...much...plaster...

WTF!?

Dude...EPIC.

Er...lol?

Giant spiders are apparently more lulzy than I thought?

passes out

coughs