2012 – Page 5 – Aphotic Ink: Words by Frances Rowat

April 14, 2012admin No Comments

Slipping away.

The week started with a post, actually. A post about how, when you were doing one job and learning another and trying to catch up on three days work besides, learning that you might need to tear out a wall of your home was just a cymbal-crash finale to the day.

(As I was writing that post, my bus home drove past me without stopping.)

Then I exited without saving the draft. So there was no post that day.

Rest of the week was equally packed, and delicately spiced with such highlights as “double work loads” and “four hours of sleep.” And the lack of posts continued.

Trying to pull myself back together and relax. Saw Boondock Saints II and picked at Fallout 3 a bit; I’m pretty close to finding Harold, I think.

Not getting any writing done. I keep being caught up in thinking about a co-writing project and the person I’m working with… Yeesh, just realized haven’t heard from her in a week. Trying to overcome my natural tendency to fret.

April 9, 2012admin No Comments

Worn to the quick.

I’m tired and angry. I can’t actually seem to stop being tired and angry, and there’s nothing in particular which I can think of that would have caused either, although there is a lot of flare-up of the angry for very little provocation. Taken all together, that’s a pretty good sign that I am having a bad day, I cannot trust my judgement at the moment, and I am probably going to crawl off to bed early and spend a lot of tomorrow muttering “I love my meds” and trying not to get prickly with my coworkers.

I hate this.

This isn’t interesting, I know. It doesn’t even interest me, and it’s unfortunately occupying a lot of my attention right now, but it’s not interesting. Like road rash, I imagine: also not interesting, also something that comes to the forefront of your mind and pushes out useful things. I know it’s not interesting, but dear god is it engrossing me at the moment, and as I am trying to get something written today, this is what it is about.

Four more days to the weekend. And I got my hands on the second Cthulhu Apocalypse books early this morning, which seems to be more in a toolkit-for-apocalypses (apocali? apocalypsos?) vein, so that might be interesting on the bus, or something.

I’ll be better tomorrow. Just need to get there from here.

April 7, 2012admin 4 Comments

Let’s talk sacrifice.

Bubbly Fizz. Mmmmm.[1]

Spoilers follow–no, honestly, serious spoilers–but it doesn’t matter unless you game. Read more Let’s talk sacrifice.

April 4, 2012admin 2 Comments

Achey and tired.

I’ve had a headache for about ten hours now. I mean, I realize I am having this headache on a day when a good friend of mine is having a migraine, and that does a lot to put it in perspective. But it’s starting to wear on me.

I got a story rejection today. I was expecting it, and it was very polite. Still… what can you do?

~~(ObAnswer: Pick up and carry on. I know, I know. Goal for tomorrow: two new pages.)~~

Watching Game of Thrones and comfortably hating Theon. I do love the Greyjoys and the Iron Islands; they make me think of King Hagrid, cold and drawn and grey, standing by the sea and watching the waves they rule. Blood and salt and iron.

And the Cthulhu shout-outs don’t hurt either.

Started two new anthologies–End of the World and Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead–and neither one is really grabbing me yet. I’m hoping a good night’s sleep will clear things up. Whether or not the extension goes through tomorrow (and I expect it will; early next week if not), at least there’s only six work-hours left until the weekend.

I’m very sorry. I wish I could come up with something more interesting to say.

April 3, 2012admin No Comments

Juggling duties.

Looking forward to the long weekend. I wouldn’t say my time’s already booked, but I expect I know how most of it is going to go. Hoping I can get a couple of hours in to sit down and write, and a chance to goof off and relax so I actually feel up to same.

(Running around an alien mothership without your faithful canine companion: totally relaxing.)

I need to reorganize my office again. My London-and-Mythos shelf needs to become just a Mythos shelf; with the latest anthology, there’s no more room for them both. Even if I relocate the London stuff, there’s only about another foot of space, but it’ll last for a bit.

Have work for at least a few months, which is nice, since I just found out that Pelgrane is putting out another sourcebook in the vein of The Dead White World. Mind, I’m not sure I would ever actually get to run anything; all the gamers I know aren’t local or wouldn’t be interested. I wish gaming books were something you could get at the library; it seems like a waste to buy one and then not do anything with it. They’re not like most books; they’re not just for reading. More like recipe collections or knitting books. Buying them and not doing anything with them is sad, and rather cluttered.

April 1, 2012admin No Comments

Sunday already

Work on Friday was a bit of a long day. One of the people I worked with last time is thinking she might want my help for summer, so that could be useful. The hour and a half commute each way is very annoying; John has suggested a few things. Heading in early, hitting the gym or a coffee shop, and working out or getting writing done.

Both would be nice. Either would be nice, honestly, although I admit I am lacking faith in my carrying through with either.

Reading Sarah Monette makes me hopeful. Sone of the things she writes are like the kind of things I would like to write. It is just nice to see that it can be done, although its a leap from there to my being able to do it. The words I got out yesterday are annoying me; I’m trying to work myself up to finishing the damn thing. Maybe I will come across a tone or style that makes sense for it and then I will at least know how to pare down and shape up what I have.

I know what I want it to be about. It is just a near-impossible jump from there to plot, apparently.

Still. Better done than not done? And if I make progress I can celebrate by taking an hour to go find Harold or something. Fallout 3 is not as good as New Vegas, I am finding, but Harold and Dogmeat help a lot.

March 31, 2012admin No Comments

Notes from a dying laptop.

Huh. 822 words in just a bit under 57 minutes. I think that’s actually pretty close to the “two hundred and fifty words every quarter hour.” Mind, half of them need to be dragged out and shot, but there are words!

Had an interesting discussion about Dale (of Walking Dead), Glen Bateman (of The Stand), and Bobby (from Supernatural) with John, earlier today. I was frustrated because I didn’t have quite the right words for them, and couldn’t pin down the common elements. (Besides, you know, all three of them have made me cry once. Damn characters.)

It’s hard to get into this without getting into spoilers, and my laptop is telling me “shut it down, dummy, you have 8 minutes left”, but the end result of the discussion was that we started with the idea of father figures and what they mean the hero has to do, and from there went through the concept of homemakers on to culture heros, tricksters, and civilizing influences. TV Tropes has failed me, and that’s okay, because while it’s a nice thing to check in on occasionally I am actually perfectly fine with opinions that aren’t pre-listed on it. (Still need a better breakdown of pet monster idea, too.)

4 minutes power left, warning light blinking, more later.

March 30, 2012admin 11 Comments

First, the hook…

A brief digression on story hooks.

There’s this thing Fallout does–all four RPGs, I mean. I can’t speak to Tactics. You start out with an important goal, and once you’ve done it, the elements of the world you were travelling through coalesce and you have the second bigger goal. (You find the water chip, but the important thing is now to deal with the Master. You find get the GECK for your village, but the important thing is now to deal with the Enclave. You find out who shot you and why, but the important thing is now the second Battle of Hoover Dam and the ultimate fate of New Vegas.)

What’s important, I think, is that the first goal is not irrelevant; you do not fail at it, you never discover it didn’t matter. But the process of achieving it results in you learning about the world, and gives you a chance to care about the second goal. It’s interesting; and as far as I can tell, it’s fairly unique in video games. I mean, I need to play more of them, but…

I’m not sure the technique would work as well in written stories or movies; the involvement is a bit more distant. Still, possibly bits of it are adaptable. Will keep an eye out for examples.

March 29, 2012admin No Comments

Lightning and lightning bugs.

Was thinking of movie commentary in the car this morning, and of Return of the Living Dead, and something that’s been in my head on and off came to mind: Why isn’t there a word that defines what gender you’re attracted to, but doesn’t do so in relation to you?

I mean, the movie has a striptease scene in a graveyard, and part of the commentary (or possibly an interview I read once; regardless) is along the lines of “Yeah, we did this for the guys… If we’d known there would have been so many girls in the audience, we’d have put in eye candy for them too.”

Which is actually kind of nice to hear, but that’s a tangent–what I’m trying to address right now is that the group meeting the definition of “finds women attractive” is not the same as the group that meets the definition of “guys”. (And yes, I get that the movie is nearly thirty years old, I am perfectly aware of colloquial assumptions, I know there is a long habit of going with the “everyone is straight until proven otherwise” assumption, and I think it’s at best a bit of a lazy and horribly erasing habit but that is neither here nor there. So.)

So what is the word or term for people who are attracted to men or women? As humans we tend to label and categorize and articulate; I can’t believe that there hasn’t been a term a little less unwieldy than “straight women and gay men and bisexuals of either any or all genders” created yet. I doubt it’s a perfect term, because one of the other things we tend to do is simplify and generalize, but there has to be something.

And am I completely missing something? Christ knows it’s possible–this knapsack is invisible, but it does one hell of a job as a pair of blinders.

Thoughts?

Edited to note:

The terms exist! They are androphile and gynophile.