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My · writing · blog
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Since re-imagining obstinately popular stories seems to be the rage today — The Incredible Hulk and Batman Begins being two examples — I’m considering re-imagining my story with Brian and Susanne to close the biggest hole in the story.
To those of you who haven’t read the story or don’t care to, it’s a love story between a human man named Brian and a Vixen named Susanne. While in many setting this may not be too strange of an idea, the setting is a roughly medieval world and Brian is the only human there. That fact I have left unexplained despite a few attempts at explaining it.
One idea of how he got there was magic. Given the story could easily be fantasy why not it be magic. Maybe have a GURPS Banestorm-style dimensional spell that brings him here, perhaps as the first of many. Possibly as a two-way spell with Furries from the setting appearing on modern-day Earth.
Another was super-science. Making the setting in the very, very far future and use Clarke’s Third Law, the most well-known that he wrote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But this brings up some niggling problems. One, the biggest, comes from the ideas presented by works like the History Channel’s “Life After People”, namely that after enough time nature will reclaim the works of man, even our grand works like the Pyramids and Hoover Dam, nothing will stand against nature in the end. The second is that even if something does, you never know what the future might bring, why now and why him?
The final idea is simply now answering the question. Leave a glaring plot hole in the story, but many authors have never answered questions like that. William Gibson never put a date on his cyberpunk stories, effectively future-proofing his stories to some extent. Other authors hand wave around the explanations on why things happen in their stories, most notably thing like the reasons why super-science devices work or why, in many setting, magic came back to the modern-day Earth. Personally, I don’t like this idea because it bugs me.
So this leaves a fourth possibility, make Brian a native to the Terrae world. My idea for that right now revolves around making him the illegitimate son of King Simonov I, the previous king, who was given to and raised by effectively gypsies as a way to hide him from his uncle the current King Klinosh I. This idea isn’t as hard hitting as making him human and takes a lot of the emotional layers out of the story, but opens up a lot of room for making a scandal.
So those are my ideas for re-imagining the story on that level. Other ideas revolve around ideas like making the map for the world be something other than North America, making the technology level of the story be further along — as late as the Renaissance or earlier like in Romanesque or, perhaps closer to my liking, like the Germanic tribes of Europe during the Ancient and Dark Ages Europe. Magic or not and how powerful if it exists. Further refining the religion. Further refining the exact social structures of the world. Creating details of their society, such as celebrations, holidays, customs, diet, sexuality and even their language.
All of those are important question for world builders and these are the questions I’m asking to be answered. Firstly, which of the ideas for the origin of Brian should I use? That’s my primary question. The other is that I’ll take any help on the other questions I can get. I love hearing other people’s ideas and if I’m allowed I’d gladly use them. I enjoy creative people being creative.
My work on these stories can go further than just a single story or even connected stories. For one thing, within my imposed limits I would love people to write stories and draw pictures based on this setting, mainly with the stipulation you leave a handful of my characters alone and you tell me that you’d done it since I want to see it. (Though I will not hesitate to provide a DMCA take down notice to anyone violating my minimal rules.) I am also wanting to make a GURPS roleplaying game setting based around this setting. Steve Jackson Games certainly encourages doing this, within their limitations which are equally minimal.
So basically, I want some people to help me hammer out ideas on this. If you wish for some kind of credit I can certainly provide it and, if you want it, and in addition I can either write your character into the story or if the GURPS idea pans out I can introduce your character as a “sample character” for the “game book”. |
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Lord Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. I took a tally of every word I've written and still have saved on my hard drive. The total is 176,980 words very, very roughly 708 pages, assuming 250 words per page. Also, my Luka story has now surpassed my "Very Old" Terrae story as my longest single work at a total, as of this moment 18,398 words, with the Terrae story being 54 words less. I figure my Luka story is about half to two-third finished, give or take. I've also decided it only amounts to practice on writing a single, well plotted, longish work. It's main problem is that, according to the author David Gerrold who wrote "The Trouble with Tribbles" and "The Martian Child", that a good story has two-and-a-half plot. Currently this story has one and a half. (A half-plot is an interaction between characters that helps drive the story, but isn't the story.) So all in all my next major goal after finishing this story is to plot out a story with Gerrold's "two-and-a-half plots" and begin writing it. I think it'll be a biotech heavy scifi story.
Current Location: |
My living room |
Current Mood: |
accomplished |
Current Music: |
Law and Order: SVU | |
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I’ve finally broken my writer’s block. It was blue and
black and made by Cooler Master, Asus, AMD and nVidia. Basically, I bought a
nice, new computer in January of 2006 and suddenly I couldn’t write. Not that
I didn’t have story idea, or wasn’t creative, I just couldn’t write. I didn’t
have the patience, didn’t have the drive, didn’t have the will. I spent more
time playing video games and browsing the Internet than doing anything useful.
Finally last January I bought me a laptop and BOOM, it broke. I’ve written
about 14,000 words on a handful of stories, and lost about 5,000 of them in a
hard drive mishap (read an over-zealous “delete” finger and a misunderstanding
of Vista’s filing systems).
That said, my current story is once again about fairies
living in the modern world, but Kevin is dead. As dead as a coffin nail, I believe
Dickens would have argued. In his place is Luka, a pretty young woman from
small town Kentucky. Luka is very much Susanne made human, with plenty of
changes to make her a unique person. For one thing, unlike Susanne she’s a freckly
green-eyed redhead rather than a dirty blond with brown eyes. Also, unlike Susanne,
she has more self-confidence and her youth wasn’t as abusive. Like Susanne, Nell
and Bruce are in her life with similar roles but an aunt and uncle. Also, she’s
lost her mother very young, only due to prison rather than true abandonment. Her
father left her mother before she even knew she was pregnant and when Luka was
four her mother killed a cheating boyfriend.
Luka had an imaginary friend growing up named Lilly, who was
actually a fairy and left when Luka was about 12 saying, “I’ll be back when you
believe in us again.” This is the same thing a Native American fairy told
someone as they rowed away on their stone canoes, other than them saying “we”.
Luka ends up with a bad reputation in high school, but mostly
because she’s the pretty girl who won’t sleep with the popular kids.
She enjoys lovers who have more brains than looks or athletic ability, so more
than a few nice-looking nerdy guys – and girls – end up getting her attention.
In the end going off to college helps her get away from that reputation.
The story itself begins in early October. Luka meets
Cynthea, Marianne, Jenn, John and Alex at the (Heine Brothers) coffee shop in
Louisville. Jenn is convinced Luka is “fay”, and the others explain they mean
like a fairy. Marianne takes Luka home and gives her a business card.
Luka calls Marianne the next day and the hang out, first at
Scott’s gallery then later Marianne takes photographs of Luka at Cherokee
park. Then they have lunch and Marianne explains how sometimes her pictures
have spirit images in them. After lunch, they head over to the coffee shop to
meet with Cynthea.
The photos come back with one of the aforementioned spirits
in them, which Marianne believes if probably a fairy. This freaks Luka out a little
after she admits to having an “imaginary friend” as a child that claimed to be
one as well. Marianne and Cynthea comfort her and remind them not to tell
Jenn. Luka asks Marianne to take her home.
When Luka gets home, she looks up information about fairies
on the Internet and gets so caught up in it that she doesn’t realize when
someone is reading over her shoulder. The person is a guy who she’d found
attractive, but in the spirit of trying to rebuilt her reputation here, never
considered pursuing. He admits to her, with some cajoling that he finds her
attractive, if a bit strange. They talk for a while about school, and their
classes, then Luka decides to go off to work on a paper for Elementary
Composition.
The story skips over most of the next week, explaining how
Luka and Marianne are becoming friends and how school is taking up a lot of her
time. In a scene in the coffee shop again, Marianne says how she was a fine
art photography major at IUS until she decided she could work on her own better.
She also says how she keeps close friends to one of her professors, despite how
she keeps trying to get her to finish her degree. Marianne admits she probably
will one day, just to say she’s done it. Jenn grills Luka more about her life,
and Luka tells her about the imaginary friend and their last words to her “I’ll
be back when you believe in us again”. Jenn is ecstatic and tells Luka she
needs to find out why they were wanting to watch her.
Another few weeks pass and it’s the few days surrounding Halloween,
Luka has been invited to Cynthea et al’s Halloween party. She comes dressed,
with Jenn and Marianne’s help, as a demure fairy. Alex, more than a little
drunk, openly flirts with Luka, who would kind of like to date him, but also
likes the guy from her dorm, too. Jenn tells Luka how tonight the Sid
open and the fairies can openly come out to the mortal world.
That very early morning, while dozing in the rec room at the
dorm, someone she’s never seen approaches Luka. After some cryptic talking she
realizes the young woman she doesn’t know is her “imaginary friend” from
childhood. She tells Luka that her father would like to meet her sometime, but
doesn’t explain who he is or were to find him.
Luka tells Jenn about this encounter and she theorizes that
her father could be one of them, as well as telling her, “see I knew you were a
bit fay”. Luka recounts to Jenn, Marianne and Cynthea what she remembered and
what she knew from later years about the night her mother went to prison.
Cynthea suggests Luka talk to John about finding out what Child Protective
Services knew about her case.
John gladly helps, with a little nudging from Cynthea to
help the new stray cat of hers. He finds out that when they did a search for
her biological father that most of the leads were either inconclusive or too
bizarre to follow. The bizarre leads are that “he’s one of them Hill Folk”
which is followed up by alluding her father is, as Jenn suggested, a fairy.
Luka decides to follow up on that lead and the story generally
goes through her arranging a meeting with her mother about her father. Her
mother, who is happy to see her daughter for the first time in nearly a decade,
tells her that she doesn’t know, nor cares, where her father is, but if she
insists to talk to one of her friends who hung out with her while they were
dating.
Luka returns home to a lukewarm reception from her aunt and
uncle. It’s lukewarm because she came home asking questions that Nell, her
aunt, didn’t want her to be asking. Bruce, her uncle, takes her aside after a
while and tells her that the friend of her mother’s isn’t exactly open to
talking to her since she was the girl with whom the boyfriend her mother killed
was cheating. Luka says she understands and tells him about her friend’s theories
about her father. Her uncle, a very down-to-earth kind of guy agrees that they
may be right, much to her amazement, and he explains how he went to the
mountain as a boy with her grandfather and had strange things happen to him.
Luka tracks down and talks to the friend of her mother’s
who, despite the lingering resentment, simply verifies everyone’s story and
goes on to tell her where she thinks he lives. The place is a outcropping of
rock part-way up the mountain, “but don’t ask me how he actually lives in that
rock.” Luka decided that night to climb up there in the morning.
The morning happens to be the day of the winter solstice, a
day when the fairies are also particularly active. As she climbs the mountain,
following an animal trail, she feels as if she’s being watched the whole way
despite no one being there. When she reaches the rock there’s no one there and
she can’t tell how anyone could be there. She eventually hikes to the top of
it and sits, resting before the climb down, when someone comes and sits next to
her. It’s a man, probably in his mid-30s, who cryptically says how he’s known
her for her whole life and regrets not knowing her better. When she figures
out, fairly quickly, that he’s her father he confirms it and takes her inside.
Inside his home is very much an Appalachian style home,
complete with quilts on the wall hung like tapestries and an obviously
decorative butter churn. Her father explains to her how he couldn’t come get
her like how he’d like to have because her uncle was, rightly, superstitious of
what was on the mountain. Luka begins to get tired and, rather than go home,
her father makes her a bed for the night.
The next day her father has a breakfast ready for her and
explains to her how the fairies actually got to the Americas (regular boats)
and how they were partly driven here by unrest in their homelands. Luka
notices by looking out his window how the day is passing much more quickly than
she’d expected and he agrees, telling her how it’s actually been almost three
days now and how she should probably get home before they send up search
parties, which wouldn’t be very welcome to the fairies living up there.
Luka thanks her father who tells her he’ll keep track of
her, how if she needs him he can still be there for her. She climbs down the
mountain to a her aunt and uncle who were worried, but not as worried enough to
call the police yet. Luka doesn’t tell them what she’s seen, a promise she
made to her father, and they have a nice Christmas.
Besides that summary, I should add that Alex is modeled on a
friend of mine named Andrew, who is OK with using his likeness in the story.
John is based off the Viking in the Snickers “Feasting Road Trip” commercials,
who also looks like a friend of Andrew’s. Finally, I based Cynthea,
physically, on a barista at the Heine Brother’s coffee who I find to be an
interesting-looking woman. The idea for the story itself began while reading
The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint and deciding that a main character from a
very small, rural town could be an interesting concept. Her story idea
originally involved her still at home, but eventually turned into her living
away from home, and finally as a college student.
I liked the idea of her trying to avoid being herself, so to
speak. Luka is very much a country girl at heart and despite her love of Indie
music, now, when she’s depressed she’ll put on Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen,
Billy Joel and John Mellencamp – her uncle’s favorites.
Well, like many, many of these blogs it’s late and I work
at 2 p.m. tomorrow and have a bad habit of not wanting to wake up in time for
that, so I’ll cut it off here. Also, other than story ideas and summaries don’t
expect to see very many blog entries containing actual story text. There’s a
niggling thing called “first publication rights” that would forbid me from
putting very much online if I plan on publishing this mother.
Current Location: |
Living room couch |
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creative |
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Camera Obscura -- Shine Like a New Pin | |
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I’m resurrecting a story idea involving a girl running away into the Adirondack Mountains. Her name is Fauna Kora Ivory, she’s a 16 year-old who came from a crappy home in my area (1127 Birchwood Drive, Jeffersonville, Indiana . . . two streets over from the exact address I grew up and a non-existent one due to urban planning) with a Cinderella-like life. When she’s 16 she runs away during vacation and is found again at 19. Well that was in 1996, and now I’m rethinking it as a fantasy story involving her being abducted by fairies when she’s in the mountains and only escaping now in the late-2000s. Most likely she’d still be 16 year-old, at least physically, and mentally scarred by what happened. I’ll probably start the story with her being found keeping shelter in the backyard of someone’s winter cabin. Probably a young (50s) retired couple who enjoy wintering in the middle of the country, or something similar. Other than that, I’m not sure where to take the story, or how to write it. I like the idea of a third person narrative in the present and first person from her perspective about how she was abducted and her time with the fairies, and trying to tie the stories together in a way where the climax of one plot line coincides with a similar revelation in the other. I’m not sure how to present the fairies, nor how to work out the plot line of the “present”. The fairies might be the easier part though, to be honest. I’ve done so much research on them that mostly I need to decide between Edmund Spencer-like fairies or Brian Froud-like fairies. Spencer wrote The Faerie Queene for Queen Elizabeth I and introduced the whole fairy court with a queen, king and feudal system for a fairy kingdom, though wars between them — like were common in feudal societies — are debatable, but not unknown in fairy lore. Especially between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Brian Froud made much more fantastic fairies, he was the art director on Dark Crystal and Labyrinth for well-known examples, but also did a large series of well-known art books — which I ironically don’t own.
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Home |
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awake |
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Murmaider -- Dethklok | |
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Fantasy: Work my Brian and Susanne story based off of popular demand. This’ll be tricky because of not only the sexual tension of an intentional romantic combination, but also because of how close I am to Susanne. Another storyline in the Terrae setting. Writing my Fairy story in a way similar to the Brian and Susanne story. Science Fiction:
A far future space trader story ala Firefly, but with at least some Furriness.
A cyber-biopunk mystery involving Furries being killed in a hunting style: “Tally Ho!”
The same cyber-biopunk setting but in a creeping ice age and with a cat-woman soldier turned police officer.
Once again, the same setting involving a revenge story of a “cybergirl” avenging a lover’s death. Contemporary:
A slice of life story involving Furry or Human characters.
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Living room |
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 uncomfortable |
Current Music: |
Star Wars: A New Hope on DVD | |
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Alright guys, dolls, Furs, whatever. I’m bored and tired of an accursed case of writer’s block so here’s my deal. I’m tired of figuring out the story, I just want to write it so here’s where you come in. I am going to present a few story ideas and YOU, dear reader(s) will be able to chose where it goes. No money, just trying to give myself something to do at night besides Internet porn and an addiction to instant messengers. First some ground rules: 1. No needless gratuitous sex! None! Niet! Nein! No! Não! Non! I don’t write porn. That said, if it makes sense and carries the story along, by all means, but nothing that would end up in “Dear Penthouse …” And if anyone says something like “They need to yiff” I will hunt you down and skin you and your puppies alive for using the word “yiff”. 2. I ultimately decide where to take the story, the audience chooses what they want to see by popular demand, but in the end I chose what they do. The characters are mine, not yours. Leading to … 3. No inserting your characters. No, your Final Fantasy MCMLXXVIII/Pokemon crossover hermaphrodite Moogle porn star/sniper/Pokemon trainer can’t somehow appear in the world to save the day with his busty female “Pikachu” and a Keyblade ripped off from Kingdom Hearts. Besides the fact Squaresoft and Nintendo would probably litigate my entire future income away for IP infringement it’s DUMB. Sorry, keep the video game masturbatory fantasies to yourself and perhaps go out and read a book. I can make you a list, but I recommend starting with Neil Gaiman, William Gibson and Larry Brown. 4. Pursuant to a comment in #3 no using anyone else’s intellectual properties, with the possible exception of the Traveller: Interstellar Wars roleplaying game setting. The reasons are simple. One is that I loathe FanFic and that’s invariably what it would become. Two, is the legal issues, and yes it’s a lesser concern for me. And three, I’m likely to not know a setting/character/etc well enough to pull it off. TIW is another issue since I’m actively working on a game in the setting. 5. No random jumping around. Sorry, but going from a Medieval setting to sitting on a spaceship dodging missile fire, then to modern day eating an Egg McMuffin at a Baghdad McDonald’s makes no sense unless you’re on acid. I don’t do acid, thus no acid trip stories. 6. No offence to anyone, but all romantic entanglements need to appeal to myself, which means straight or lesbian. It’s not that I’m against homosexuality, I just can’t even fake a gay relationship enough to write it. Sorry, but that’s the humor of it. 7. Rules subject to change, amending and ignoring, at will, by me alone. Tell me some of your ideas and in a future post I will provide more information on rough story ideas, characters and character types I like, and most likely a LiveJournal link for the stories themselves.
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Home |
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bored |
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WLKY News | |
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It’s been a very long time
since I’ve updated and I probably have a few unposted files on my
hard drive, but I don’t think it’s worth trying to slog through
those to figure out what to post. For one thing they’re largely
moot and this blog is largely a scratch pad for my ideas to be “peer
reviewed” anyway. As such I’m going to begin with my more recent
ideas and work backward.
First off, I simply haven’t been
writing nearly as much as I used to. Mostly it’s been after buying
a new computer in January 2006 and I’ve been preoccupied with
playing games. (Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is awesome, by the
way, and looks better on my PC than on the X-Box 360.) I’ve also
been putting more effort into role-playing games such as World of
Darkness — Mage: The Awakening and various GURPS settings, though I
sold my Mage books to pay bills a few months ago. I’ve had money
problems which, along with medication changes, has lead to my
depression and even though I said I wouldn’t get into my personal
life here, it’s worth saying that simply to explain why I’ve been
so lax lately about writing and posting.
Recently I started on a revision of
TSC I’ve nicknamed “October Project” that involves removing
everything past Chapter One and revising it by almost doubling its
length and speeding along the story substantially. I’ve also
answered a nagging question about why the fairies chose Kevin, now
he’s a Daoine Sidhe lord, and not just a human or a human with
fairy blood. He was a changeling who ended being raised unknowingly
to an adult and into his “middle age”. The story about his
father dying in Vietnam is largely made up now and might even be
dropped simply because of his revised back story. Ariel is a pixie
and has been returned to being a servant of Teagan Lucas and he is
now Kevin’s uncle. Siofra is still kind of Teagan Lucas’
“administrative assistant” and of no real relation to Kevin.
I’ve added a character named Sain who is a Daoine Sidhe lady who
will eventually be “intended” to Kevin, though he resists it.
Many of these changes are in order
to allow a closer melding of the story with Brian and Susanne, with
Susanne being replaced with Ariel and Joan replaced with Sain.
Teagan Lucas is equivalent to King Simonov, but not entirely. The
overall story involving Kevin trying to stop a mountaintop fairy
mound in the Appalachian Mountains from being destroyed is going to
take some major revision, but then again that part of the story is
mostly underdeveloped anyway.
I’ve been working on the Brian and
Susanne story some as well. I’ve added a character named Joan who
is about as different from Susanne as can be, though she’s still a
bit short. Joan is an Oncid, a Jaguar Genah, with black fur, kinda
chubby, but with, to put it nicely, B-I-G HUGE breasts. Her
appearance is based off of a nude model who wears about a 38HH bra,
which given the rest of her appearance are quite real. Joan is a
royalty and is eventually married to Brian, very much against his
wishes. She’s 17 at her introduction and not entirely thrilled
with the arrangement either. She always knew she’d marry someone
quite a bit older than her, and actually older than Brian, and while
she’s not disappointed with Brian she doesn’t like the fact she’s
being used as a more overt political tool than she was previously.
Joan’s personality is quite a bit
different from Susanne’s. For one thing she has a pretty well
balanced psyche. She has nothing like a major mental illness and
actually accepts, mostly because she knew it was going to happen
anyway, the fact that Brian has a paramour in the form of Susanne.
In turn Brian has allowed, or rather not cared about and somewhat
encouraged, Joan having a lover as well. Susanne has changed some
into being a bit snippy when she’s in a bad mood and distant when
she’s depressed or tired. She’s also, officially “grown” a
bit into wearing a 32B bra.
Well it’s not as long as some of
my posts but I haven’t been in the mood to write these things as
much lately.
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Bedroom |
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 grumpy |
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History Channel | |
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Alright, guys and dolls I came to a conclusion while going through the Charles de Lint books at Boarders. I’ve been writing my fairy story without a real hard and fast plot. I have a few characters, a couple situations and scenes and a very vague idea of what I want to have happen, compared to the Terrae story with at least a basic idea for a plot line. So where does that leave me…? Well … for starters I need to figure out a plot before I go any further. I can’t even full decide whether to introduce Ariel in Chapter Three or a few chapters later or, more importantly and related, whether she should be a fosterling or a Pixie. I like her as a Pixie, but a fosterling would allow me to make her story closer to Susanne’s. Susanne of course being who I want her to ultimately resemble. The problem is I don’t have a full grasp of the typical urban fantasy’s plot structure. I have plenty of urban fantasy novels in bookshelf though, “Drink Down Moon” and “The Onion Girl” by Charles de Lint and “Street Magic” by Michael Reaves for starters. I’m going to pick up “NeverWhere” and maybe “Perdidio Street Station” again sometime too. “Perdidio Street Station” isn’t an urban fantasy per se, but has an orderly science fiction or fantasy (I can’t decide what it is) urban setting and there is a shift in the accepted reality similar to a horror novel, but not in a scary way. I got distracted looking up roleplaying game stuff online and since it’s 4 a.m. EST (it changed to that three hours ago) and I want to get to sleep in the dark I’ll make the rest brief. I think I’m going to put a hold on writing the fairy story for a while and instead focus on figuring out a plot that doesn’t sound too unoriginal or contrived. One problem I have is that there is an obvious and nearly clichéd in fairy fiction adversary — The Unseelie. That can be a blessing and a curse. Should I simply do what’s easiest and figure out a plot involving the evil Seelie trying to hurt the “good” Seelie? (The Seelie often do things that aren’t good in the human moral sense, but at least they’re not trying to kill you and dye their hats in your blood.) So do I use the Unseelie or someone else? I’ve considered as many various things as the Unseelie influencing coal mining operations in the Appalachian Mountains to focus on a Seelie sidhe. In this style the sidhe aren’t a physical hole in the ground but a semi-physical entrance to Faerie. (They’d have the space of the mountain’s interior, but no amount of surveying would find it even through seismic testing, etc. So if the coal really is there it really is there.) Similarly I’ve considered it for a more local story too, but involving development of like one of the Floyd’s Knobs near New Albany, Ind. (Which might lead to a story I’d like better since I’m against urban sprawl.) In that case the question is mostly how? The Knobs are huge and not very open to leveling and turning into a subdivision like they have parts of Sellersburg and Charlestown where it’s fairly flat. Both might work as is, but removing Unseelie as the reason. (And you’re getting into Rosco and the Rats of NIMH territory for ecological banner waving, ironic since I’m not a huge ecologist.) Besides that I could have a rift in the Seelie Court causing a problem, whatnot … Either way… I’m going to start READING similar fiction more now and focus less on writing it until I have a clearer idea. It’s worth adding that I took what I’ve written with Kevin/Brian and the writing club loved it. It validated Brian as a well developed character and made me decide to make Ariel more like Susanne, but I can’t even decide a few minor details with her like is she a pixie or a human fosterling, should she be Teagan Lucas’s servant or merely directed to Kevin through him? (As it’s written Chapter Three would suggest that she’s directed to him since she’s not in it, but I’m not all that happy with the current form of Chapter Three either.) I need to decide that since matching her up life event for life event would be harder if she’s a pixie since fairies very rarely have children and they have legendary pregnancies. (Nine months, which is nothing to a fairy, but imagine Shakespeare’s Titainia pregnant…) But I like the added fantasy element of having her be a pixie over a human. Either way I’ve decided to shrink Ariel some to 4’9” and 70 lbs and I’m considering making Susanne a bit smaller too, probably to Ariel’s original size of 4’11” and 90-lbs, but keeping her A-cup chest. I like Susanne as being taller and curvier than Ariel, for what little curves and height she has. I’ve even considered making Susanne a bit curvier and giving her a B cup or so, just to make her seem less pitifully child-like in build. I have more of a mental image of Ariel than I do Susanne since I’ve seen plenty of petite flat-chested porn models and it’s easier for me to refer to that mental image rather than think, “now add fur and a tail…” Also I’m closer emotionally to Susanne and I’d simply like her to have a bit more of a chest … lol Anything over a B cup would make her less self-conscious and probably anything over a D would kill her back. Plus, could you really see Susanne packing DD’s at her size? If I did it she’d have to be chubby and though I personally like the short, chubby and stacked, I don’t see Susanne like that and I doubt if she gained 40 pounds (from about 90-lbs to 130) she’d gain that many cup sizes. Anyway it’s closing on 6 and I need sleep …
Current Mood: |
 tired |
Current Music: |
Mediaeval Baebes -- "I Am Eve" | |
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Alright I lied several times over the course of this writing blog, so sue me! I’m working on a new Furry story, non-Terrae, and based off of the Twilight: 2000 setting. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned Kelly Adams and Helen Meyer, but I probably have … actually I know I have because I know the name Vigdis Agustdottir off of the tip of my tongue and that’s who Helen Meyers is based off of. Good! Kelly is now Sergent John “Rommel” Taylor. He’s called Rommel because for some strange reason even though Erwin Rommel was a Lupine Canid, he was still called the “Desert Fox” and John is a Vulpid from Arizona. The action is still in Germany and I’m adding roughly a squad (8 men) lead by a first lieutenant. (Usually a platoon of 40 men are run by a lieutenant, but times are tough.) I’ve added Specialist Andrew “Bonehead” Lewis who got his name after he started to disassemble the buttstock of his M16 on one of his first days with the company. (Only the armorer should do that, btw.) As well as First Lieutenant Sandra “Dee” Dean. Her nickname is obvious to older people, younger people who like 1960s and 70s culture and politics (like me) or people who really like Grease (which I loathe!)
Current Mood: |
cold |
Current Music: |
Some Fleetwood Mac song | |
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For those of you interested in my
personal life I’ve updated and will continue updating at much
more frequently my personal web log on Live Journal as “ciaran_skye”.
Besides that I’m happy to say
that as of last week I’m a publisher writer. What you may ask?
Did it involve Susanne? Kevin? Mary Roberts? Jazmine? No. It
was titled (not by me by the way) “Oncourse
missing tools” and is about the Indiana University learning
and collaboration program between faculty and students being updated
(actually completely replaced) and that the updated version was
missing features of the previous version. Also this week I had
another story (only about 200 words) published called “Literary
Review Showcases student literature”. You’ve
probably guess by the titles (and links) that they are journalistic
pieces for the IU Southeast newspaper The Horizon.
I may not be much, but it’s still being published.
Speaking of that
literary review. I’m considering becoming one of the hundreds
of entries to it next year. I’m planning on revising a story
called “Roll Me Away” which is based on a Bob Seger song
of the same name off of The Distance and Greatest Hits 1.
By revising I mean completely rewriting from scratch and changing
major parts of it. Basically I want to capture the first part of the
song where the singer (it’s semi-autobiographical, but I don’t
want to say Seger) is motorcycling across the country and picks up a
woman in a bar and takes her with him.
Took a look down a westbound
road,
Right away I made my choice
Headed out to my big
two-wheeler,
I was tired of my own voice
Took a bead on the
northern plains
And just rolled that power on
Twelve hours
out of mackinaw city
Stopped in a bar to have a brew
Met a girl
and we had a few drinks
And I told her what I’d decided to
do
She looked out the window a long long moment
Then she looked
into my eyes
She didn’t have to say a thing,
I knew what
she was thinkin’
Roll, roll me away,
Won’t you
roll me away tonight
I too am lost, I feel double-crossed
And
I’m sick of what’s wrong and what’s right
We
never even said a word,
We just walked out and got on that
bike
And we rolled
And we rolled clean out of sight
You can see how that can become a short
story. I also want to capture in the woman the feeling from his
songs “Jody Girl” (which is coincidentally on as I type
this) off of Beautiful Loser
and Live Bullet and
“The Ring” off of Like a Rock.
Both songs are about a woman who’s looking back at a marriage
that has lost its spark.
Jody Girl has this
line I want to capture:
Didn’t he put you on a
pedestal,
When first you met?
Sure was some honeymoon,
Ain’t
it hard to forget?
What ever happened to that crazy boy
With
the love light in his eyes?
Used to bring you flowers every day.
And “The Ring” is basically
“Jody Girl” at 50. I want to make the woman be closer to
her mid- to late-30s or maybe even early 40s who doesn’t have
kids because she can’t, which takes away a lot of the lyrics
from both songs, but frees her up in the story to simply “roll
clean out of sight”. She’s married, but there’s no
love. Her husband is faithful and not abusive or anything, there’s
just no love anymore. She can’t afford to leave him, mostly
because she’s supporting him with two jobs. He’s been
fired from a GM factory in St. Louis and she’s working at
another factory as well as a waitress in a bar at nights. In the
previous version I described her sex life as “every other week
on Thursday”, which is depressing since I know spontaneity is
so much better. I
might even call the waitress “Jody”.
The main character is “Clark
Abbott” (Seger’s middle name and the lead guitarist for
the Silver Bullet Band’s last name) a retired mechanical
engineer for Ford, for their manual transmissions. He retired early
at about 55 or so and decided to do what he’d always dreamed
and go the way of Jack Kerouac and travel the country and then write
about it. He pulls into a little bar in small town western-Missouri
(“twelve hours out of Mackinaw City”) fairly late and
it’s just what he can tell are the regulars. He simply talks
to her about her personal life, but not trying to pick her up at all.
He’s just being curious. She tells him a lot of the details I
mentioned and she says something noteworthy and he pulls out a little
notepad (not a reporter’s notepad, but just a little 3”
by 4” pad) and writes it down and explains what he’s
doing. She’s instantly interested. They talk off and on for
several hours and she’s talking more and more about wanting to
leave her life behind and start a new one. Finally it’s
closing time and she lets him stay until she has to leave and by this
point they’ve reached an understanding about what’s going
to happen. She’s going to go away with him and just like in
the song, “We never even said a word, we walk and got on that
bike”.
It’s a nice story.
It’s not outwardly romantic like the Terrae one, but it’s
subtly, if only because it’s a man and a woman. It’s
“contemporary literary” and even though I loath
that style because of my Writing Fiction class, it’s how you
get published when one of the academic adviser for the review is the
professor of the class. (Really he’s a great guy and I loved
him as a professor, I just didn’t like the curriculum.)
Which I
suppose can bring me to a bit on my views on “contemporary
literary” style, genre writing and to some extent that class.
I write
in a genre. Actually several genres and often at once. Most people
read almost exclusively genre work. I’m one of them. Other
than non-fiction and tiny bit of Jane Erie1
and The Great Gatsby2
I read during high school, as far as I remember I have read one
contemporary literary novel which I have mentioned many times before
Fay by Larry Brown. I’ll be quite honest and you’ve
all heard this by now, it’s one of the best books I’ve
ever read. If Larry Brown wrote fantasy, this would have easily won
the Hugo and Nebula. (He won several major literary awards for
Southern writers, so it’s not a stretch, though not for Fay.)
When it
comes to “contemporary literary” novels I’ll
read them. Not a problem. Short stories is where things break down
a lot. “Contemporary literary” short stories are crap.
Most stories of any length can be compared to a joke: set up and a
punchline. “Contemporary literary” style doesn’t
require a “punchline”. In writing terms you can have an
exposition and not even rising action. You can introduce characters
and let them live their lives, for no reason. It’s like
writing about a game of The Sims 2, but where the player isn’t
trying to force drama into their lives. They get up, the go to work,
the come home, and go to sleep. Throw in chores and hygiene and
repeat ad infinitum.3
It’s as boring as hell. They’ll often put a clever spin
on it. Maybe a little language and family problems. Unusual
perspectives4
are always fun. But ultimately and usually, nothing happens.
Let’s
face it, chick flicks suck. (Though I like several, to be honest.)
Hunter S. Thompson said that, “All political power comes
from the barrel of either guns, pussy, or opium pipes, and people
seem to like it that way.” The same is true about fiction.
Unless there’s violence, sex or drama most people don’t
care. Seriously. Monster Ball
would have been a footnote in Hale Berry’s career if it wasn’t
for the sex scene.
Shakespeare
knew this! Watch Othello and
try to tell me that you don’t see sex, violence and drama. Try
to make Henry V
without a war scene. Try to make A Midsummer Night’s
Dream without it having a
certain amount of sensuality in it. And there’s that tragedy
about teenage lust and stupidity that people for some retarded reason
consider a love story. Shakespeare even had biting political
commentary, if you know where to look in his plays. Going back to
Hunter S. Thompson’s opium pipes, Falstaff was so funny because
he was a gluttonous drunkard. (And actually a piece of political
commentary.)
And these rotten, nothing going on, short stories could never be
turned into a novel. Chances are the author couldn’t write a
novel and retain their “style”. People want to pick up a
novel and get the full plot curve: exposition, rising action, climax
and resolution. Even novels that are a part of a series have a
certain amount of a plot curve, it’s just that the resolution
is more of a set up for the next book and the next book needs less of
a exposition. (Ideally, you want to have rising action and a mini
climax in each chapter, to keep people’s attention.) These
people probably have trouble planning in the long term.
Which mentioning planning in the long term brings me to news about
Susanne… Once again from my psychology class. I’ve
always wanted Susanne to be smart. I couldn’t deal with a dumb
woman and she’s my “ideal”.
Well… Her life complicates that. When a child is raised in
an atmosphere of abuse their brain wires in a way that the lower
brain — with only the basic emotions like fear and the most
knee-jerk fight-or-flight reactions — becomes wired more
closely to sensory input (and thus learning) than the cerebrum. The
cerebrum is where we think. It’s where we have our “book
learning”. Someone who was abused as a child knows how to
survive on a more basic, animal level that someone who wasn’t..
The problem is that when her brain wired itself it connected more
neurons between her lower brain and sensory input than it does
between her sensory input and higher brain. (My fingers are wanting
to type “Brian” here and i need to remember to type
“brain” … lol)
This took an hour to figure out with someone and went through several
failed analogies I came up with this one and I’m sorry to
people who aren’t big military buffs.
Basically you have a soldier in a war zone. If they see someone
firing an AKM in the market place they shoot. That’s the
normal sensory input-lower brain response. If he sees someone
carrying one, but not threatingly he calls on higher command. Once
again normal sensory input-higher brain response. But lets say the
soldier has been there for two weeks and every time he’s seen
someone with an AKM, they’ve been firing. They’re very
likely to shoot as soon as the see the rifle’s profile. That’s
the abuse response, sensory input being tied more strongly to lower
brain. But higher command can’t learn anything about the
situation on the ground if the soldier won’t communicate with
them what’s going on. Sensory-input not stimulating neural
growth in the higher brain.
Long story short, Susanne isn’t all that smart. I hate to say
that her IQ (assuming someone wrote a Normaran Genah test) is
probably under 100. Not too much under, but under 100. Somewhere
around 85-95. For reference if memory serves in Indiana being
considered mentally handicapped begins at 72. Kentucky it’s
68.
Anyway, it’s the usual “I should have been in bed hours
ago, good night.” Good night.
1It’s
probably spelled wrong, but it is also the most boring book in the
history of literature.
2Actually,
I read Soul Music and Mort by Terry Pratchett instead
of the second half of The Great Gatsby and I still made an A
by bullshitting off of the in-class discussion.
3Just
so you know, in my game I have Brian, Hara and I couldn’t get
Amanda to get to know Brian so I had him go out with another female
Sim and had Hara find out by reading a card on a bunch of flowers
Brian got when he came home. He moved out before Hara went to sleep
that night.
4Like
second person … that was a gonzo story …
Current Mood: |
cold |
Current Music: |
"American Storm" -- Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band | |
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