Friday, June 29, 2001

Aww... *Waves at Scrubby* Thanks. I'm going to let my Basques simmer... Maybe I'll go to TitleWave or the library and see what I can dig up. They were in Guernica last, right? I seem to remember that was the last place we left them...

As for BNN... I have no idea if anything new will be forthcoming, but I shoooooould probably put TSLC up on topcities. *Pokes at things*
Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:14 PM |

Oh! I write a lot of my posts in ClarisWorks HomePage, first. This means I have a backup copy, _and_ I have all the HTML in place for me to just C&P. *Small grin* It's easier that way.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:16 PM |

-This- is why anime and manga has bishounen characters. Found on the Japanese Hockey Federation's website, and more specifically, here.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 10:53 PM |

Thursday, June 28, 2001

Hee... Another version of using Sailor Moon to torture relatively innocent guys... The sad thing is that while it looks like Sanosuke from RK, I kind of don't think that's who it is.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:39 PM |

*Blinkle* Shinnonu doesn't like reading blogs that are written in the third person. It makes her head hurt. Particularly when the author writes like an eight-year-old.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:54 PM |

Wai! I gotta take my dad to the airport... At 3:30 AM. Ugh. And I didn't sleep well last night/this morning... No, it's not really earth-shattering news, but... I dunno. I'm foggy and I can be inane if I want to.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 2:57 PM |

More Off and On line Comic...something.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 3:12 PM |

Yeek... *Small shiver* I just looked at the Ep. Summaries for Gravitation, and now I don't know that I want to see it all that badly... *Frown*
Posted by: Shannon M.: 3:22 PM |

Wanna try pronouncing difficult words? Head over to Utilikilts and give the name for their fans a shot.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 4:34 PM |

Heh. _I_ want a shirt that says 'It was late, and we were tired.' It was a motto near and dear to my heart for a couple of years, actually... *Snickers at Reesa*

Er... Something of an explanation as to why I brought that up.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 4:35 PM |

Wednesday, June 27, 2001

Notice: You are hereby warned that the following post rambles. Badly.

Skwerp! Skwerpskwerpskwerp... Okay, now that _that's_ out of the way... *Blink* I didn't know Pete died as a POW... Yeek.

*Ahem* Scrubby-chan? *pokepoke* I think I warned you about self-deprecation when it came to your writing. Do I have to make good on my threat? *Arches a brow, then waves a hand* Never mind. Anyhow!

You've got talent, Scrubby. No doubt about that at _all_, in my mind... Look at the piece you wrote about Mal's house on that night, and the night he was shipped off to France. Look at the bit you wrote about Duch going back to her house, after it had burned. I remember Duch, and I love her still. She was wonderful to bounce Sparx off of, because she was _so_ human, _so_ real. I miss her, y'know. Miss her, and my Basques... I keep meaning to do some more with them and Hazel and Alice, 'cause I have their names pinned to my wall...

I'm thinking that maybe your problem is not perserverence. Look at it this way: A year ago, I was trying to figure out how on -Earth- to convey to you how deeply it would cut the people around you if you were to vanish from the face of the earth. You could have ignored everything, you could have let despair and fear and pain drag you down into the darkness that never lets anyone go.

You fought. You overcame. You continue to do both. You fucking gave up a job you'd been doing for over a -decade- and you're in school, chasing after knowledge. If that's not perserverence, I don't know what is.

So. About your troubles... I think it may be one of the less-fun facets of dyslexia surfacing. Dyslexics are good at starting things, terrific at charging full steam ahead... Until they get to the middle and they can't figure out where to go, so they just drift away. Not that they -can't- or -won't- finish, just that they're easily distracted by bright shiny things and abandon their current projects for something new and interesting.

I know that _I_ get stuck that way -- I know where I want to start, and sometimes where I want to end up, it's the getting there that trips me. Take Stealing The Spire, for instance. I knew that Ko and Meyers had been in jail, that they were lovers, and that they stole the Murkowski spire. I didn't know for a very long time the how of all of it. Or the why.

Eventually, I figured out that they'd gone to jail for robbing a jewelry store, and that Ko's resentment of his rehabilitators led to the stealing of the spire. It still needs massive revision, which I keep meaning to do, but -- Oooh, shiny! Lookit the shiny pritty bishounen...

*Blink* Like I was saying. There are only two other stories -- okay, original-fiction stories -- in my files that are anywhere near as complete as StS. They're The Finch And Herbert Show and Maxim And Deuce At The DryCleaners. (And they're both unfinished!)

Marc and Vic doesn't count because the only plot element that's actually vital to them, the provides any kind of momentum at all, is the will-they/won't-they bit. And we've answered that question.

And to veer back to the SCWRP, abruptly... Role Playing is responsible for my interest in that period of time. Usually I only want to know about the history of an area, or era, when something I'm working on/with touches on it. I don't think I even had a -character- for it when it piqued my interest. That's an important part of the SCWRP for me.

As for the writing side of it... I don't know where else I could go with my Basques. I know that Asti has a crush on Zubie still, I could write about them. And the Red Cross workers arriving, the rebuilding... And part of what holds me back there are my own doubts. How can I make it -interesting-? What angles can I find in the rubble, that will make people -want- to read it? What angles can I find that haven't been done to death, and can it still have as happy an ending as one can expect in a warzone?

I like happy endings. I really, really, -really- like happy endings. This world is incredibly unfair, at times, and I like my books to be relatively realistic -- suspension of disbelief for magic and psychic powers and dragons and such -- but I don't want the guy to die before he can confess his love. Or for the characters to go through mental/physical hell, not admitting anything, and then everybody dying. I want happy things, dammit!

My other problem is that my mind wanders. I like tangents, too. I'm gonna drag up another, seemingly unrelated point, here...

I don't know where else I could go with my Basques, by myself. Sometimes, it's just a little too much -work- to coordinate _all_ the thoughts and reactions and feelings and desires of two or three characters. I can't tell you how many times I've wished I could just pop into IWT or Glen's and throw my characters at various people and see what happens.

Oh, I _could_ do that, with IWT anyhow... But see, I have this other thing -- I don't -trust- any of the new blood in there to A) notice my characters, B) be worth the effort of playing to, or C) be respectful of where I want _my_ C to go, or the way I want them to grow. And B is a huge problem. Mine alone, but a problem nonetheless.

Maybe if I posted some of my stuff to BoD or AnSceal I'd get a better response?

In short, I doubt it's perserverence that's your problem. A lack of interest? A distraction? Or maybe just plain old blockage? Do your Cs still whisper at you in the night? Do they pop up in the middle of grocery shopping to snicker at the finger-cots? Do pictures of the Spanish countryside infest your dreams?

So many of mine have just faded away. I'm sure I could resurrect them, if I tried. I let them sleep, though, because I have new voices that natter and whisper and creep into my dreams... I was half-dreaming of a Gundam Wing/Final Fantasy VIII crossover, this morning.

 

And here's the answer you -don't- want to hear: No.

No one else can do this for us, because these are -our- stories. No one else can quite see what we see in our heads, at the edges of our visions. Some days I'd just about _kill_ for an I/O port and a printer I could hook up to my brain, so I could just let the images and the words unfurl and never have to worry over the mechanics of it.

We're of an age where -we- are the story-tellers, now. We're of a people that started history by telling stories, generation to generation. When paper and writing came along, the stories were set down. The legend of Gilgamesh is thought to be the earliest known story (and according to some the first slash story, too). Stories are in our blood, and I will be the first to admit that it's hard, being the story-teller. It's easier to listen than to create.

My Sisters In The Light Of The Moon piece was hard to write -- I had to create a Creation myth. It was...not cool, or fun, but... Exhilarating, maybe, to write it. No, even that's the wrong word... Satisfying. I had done it, something that maybe the first women did, to explain their difference from the men. I had done something -ancient-, and I'd done it _right_.

I have no idea as to what I'm trying to say, except that you're _not_ untalented, and that you're not the only one that looks at their materials and wonders, bewildered, 'what the HELL was I gonna do? What -am- I gonna do?'. You'll figure it out eventually... And maybe I/we should try taking the characters and throwing them into something completely different from what they were up to last time we left them. *Ponders this* Reinstate the Three-A-Day challenge? With a change in the rules from three paragraphs to a three-sentence minimum, not including dialogue? Posted to a central Blog, maaaaybe, or to the An-Sceal mailing list, if Reesa's agreeable...

Might be fun. Might be informative. Might just be a pain in the ass. But if nothing else, it's Just An Idea.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 11:21 PM |

And now, A Little Something DIfferent...

Postage Stamp Theater. Little animated gifs for the yaoi-lemon lover in you. (This link posted 'specially for Scrubby. Hee.)

 

WereFox's Den

YYH fics. GW fics. The utterly hysterical Wedding Bells For Quatre, in which almost everyone gets married and a few fanfic standards are skewered. Go. Read. NOW.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 11:25 PM |

Tuesday, June 26, 2001

So. Here I am.

So?

} } ... If/
[then --]
;sowhat?

Sorry, programmer-geek humor. Idinit fun to laugh at things you know are funny, but you don't know -why- they are?
Posted by: Shannon M.: 6:38 PM |

Is it time to swallow my pride and wash it down with my principles?

I need money, but do I need it that badly?

Is there anything in this stupid fucking little world that I can do, and do well, to completion?

Is there any way that I, colossal and spectacular failure that I am, can even hope to succeed?

Love that silence. So reassuring... Always been there, always will be.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 6:52 PM |