The Devil and the Muse

Dear Sasha Nein,

WHY THE HELL DO YOU KEEP GOING ON ABOUT RUSSIAN HISTORY? This is all very fascinating, really, and I'm sure somehow symbolic or some crazy nonsense, but--the plot, for the love of God, the PLOT. Remember that? Yeah. You lost it somewhere back on page 36. Along with my sanity, I think.

Seriously. What the hell.

No love,
tyraarane

I somehow made it over the massive hurdle in my way that was Election Day. (Although, as a pro-tip, do not attempt to write while watching Stephen Colbert. THINGS GET WEIRD.) Added difficulty: my body is apparently attempting to come down with a cold. Dammit.

Anyway. I am now past two major milestones in the fic--I'm well into the second chapter, and I went over 10,000 words in total word count today. Things are going awesome-ly. Although I'm not sure I believe that the Ferret is actually one-fifth of the way done now. There's still too much to write! ...I'm too wordy, dammit. Also, if someone could explain to me why one of my characters has suddenly decided to go around quoting "Jabberwocky," I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

Finally...as celebration of my getting past the 10,000 word mark, have another snippet--a slightly lengthier one this time, the opening scene from Chapter Two. (Obvious disclaimer is obvious: first draft material, unedited, subject to change, etc. etc.)

( And as in uffish thought he stood, the Jabberwock, with eyes of flame... )

10,467 / 50,000 (20.0%)

Sanity: yup, slowly slipping. Case in point, last night I had a dream that one of the characters from the Ferret met Barack Obama. ...And then there was some weirdness involving a parking ramp, a mountain lion, and reflective traffic signs. I don't really know.

...SEND HALP, PLZ. Actually, just send booze. And caffeine. Pretty please?

On the plus side, I had very little to do at work today and ended up writing almost 2,000 words. This means I have a buffer of almost 300 words going into tomorrow, which is good, since we may be busy at work (a lot of area schools have election day off, since polling places are often in various school buildings), and then I'm probably going to end up stuck in a line to vote for hours on end. So who knows how much I'll actually get written tomorrow, but I'm trying not to lose the good stride I've started out with.

Finally--snippets! Just a couple of short descriptions here, for some new (well, new if you haven't read the old version of the Ferret, anyway) characters we meet early on in the story. I think these are some of my favorite passages in the story so far.

( Snip! )

5,279 / 50,000 (9.0%)

Yep, I'm officially doing NaNo--signed up on the official website and everything. (Which is slower than molasses going uphill in January, because of all the people logging in--but if you can get there, my author profile is here.) And for the record, my goal this November is to get a finished (if very rough) draft of the rewrite for One Flew East. I'm starting to get the feeling that it'll be longer than 50,000 words, in which case there might have to be a NaNoWriMo II: Electric Boogaloo in December, but...that's assuming I survive November, first.

So far, so good. Despite the added difficulty that I worked 8:30AM - 5PM on the 1st, I was able to squeak past the required amount of words (~ 1,667 words/day), which is always good for a start. The same goes for today, despite the fact that I have not yet begun to procrastinate.

I'm also rediscovering the fact that I can be very, very good at being very, very verbose. Case in point: today, I wrote out the entire history of a psychic prison, for no other reason than hey, it was kind of cool, and goddammit, I could. And it added almost 400 words to my word count.

Also: widgets! These aren't updated quite so reliably, because the NaNo site is currently slow as hell, and relying on cached information for the widgets themselves. So, basically...I fail considerably less than they say I do. Honest.

3,361 / 50,000 (6.0%)

Might be posting story snippets as the month goes on, too, depending on my sanity level and whether or not my inner editor rears her evil head.

ETA: More reliable, less sucky word meter instituted.

Sorry for not updating for such a long time. I couldn't, you see. There was a cat on my keyboard. ...No, really. There was. Honest! (Ollie has finally figured out, after 3+ years, that my laptop spews out hot air like its second job was a space heater. So now he likes to curl up to it to get warm. ...And to read Fark.com and watch me play video games, if the amount of time he spends staring at the monitor is any indication.)

Anyway, work: still going well. We had our Halloween "hands on" program (lots of arts & crafts for the kids to do, basically) last weekend, which...I think I may finally be recovered from it? Maybe? It's our busiest day of the year, and involves a lot of small children running around in costume, hyped up on the candy some ill-advised soul decided to give them. And all us employees are also in costume, for the record. (Our theme was retro toys. I went as G.I. Jane, for lack of any better ideas/willingness to spend money.) So...that complete and utter insanity aside, things are going well.

I've also been thinking lately that, you know, it's almost November, and...I kind of want to try doing NaNoWriMo. I'm not sure why, given that the last time I tried it it was a catastrophic failure, but--I think it's been pretty well established by now that I'm insane, so we'll just go with that. My main reason for wanting to it, though, is that I've been stalling on the rewrite of One Flew East for forever and a day now, and NaNoWriMo might be the perfect steel-toe-stiletto-heels kick in the ass I need to actually get working on it. So...yeah, I may actually attempt this.

And if you never hear from me again, just assume that NaNoWriMo killed me dead.

So, it's been a while. Oops. Well, let's see...

Work: work is going pretty well. I just got my first paycheck last week, and my training is pretty much done, though there's a few things I still need to figure out. My shouting into the half-broken PA system to make the "museum is now closed" announcements, for example, needs work. But I'm starting to get the swing of things and be comfortable out walking around on the floor and interacting with patrons, so that's good. Also, all those hours of standing and walking around means I've lost two pounds. Whooo! :D (Unemployment foiled my attempts at exercise and conspired to make me gain a few pounds I didn't need, sorry to say.) So, things are going well on that front. I'm really starting to enjoy the job...crazy people and a few petulant small children not withstanding.

(Though I do apparently have some sort of Look of Death™ going on. A sixth grader had taken some stuff out of our schoolhouse exhibit and was running around with it, and I swear, all I did was raise my eyebrow at him--he stopped dead in his tracks, turned around, and put the stuff back where it belonged. Yay, I have mad glaring skillz?)

One downside, though: our current temporary/special exhibit is retro toys. (For varying definitions of "retro." I had 95% of the toys on display when I was a kid, and dammit, I'm not that old.) This includes slinkies. It also includes a slinky jingle that plays whenever kids press a button, and also on rotation with a few other old 50s/60s toy commercials on a TV set-up in one corner of the exhibit. ...I have had that damn jingle stuck in my head for two days. This is the jingle. I'm so glad it's on YouTube, because now I can share the pain earworm. Seriously though: most annoyingly catchy song ever, and I found myself humming it in the shower this morning. *facepalm* I'm doomed.

Fanfic: I'm finding time to write during downtimes at work, miraculously. There's a lot of times when there's nobody out on the floor and everything's cleaned up already, so there's nothing for me to do but stare at a wall. Or at least attempt to look busy and productive by scribbling away in my notebook.

Other stuff: I went down to my university's homecoming last weekend; pretty much all of my friends (who I hadn't seen since graduation in early May) had made arrangements to meet there and have sort of a "reunion" weekend...plus it was a good opportunity to see some friends who haven't yet graduated. Seeing everybody--and the campus itself--was wonderful. In a way it was like we never left at all. It was a long drive to get down there, but...it was worth it. :) I really needed a break, and to catch up with all of my friends.

Also been playing Uru: Complete Chronicles lately--had to start over the beginning, because I hadn't played for so long I forgot what I was doing in my last save...except that it involved hunting for the invisible markers of DOOM™, which I think gave me some sort of post-traumatic marker disorder. So far, though, the replay is going pretty well--interface/control issues aside*, I'm actually getting into the game and starting to enjoy it a bit more. Maybe it's because you have to listen to Yeesha's explanations more than once to actually figure out WTF she's trying to tell you. ...Though her first imager speech still makes me giggle inappropriately. And a lot of things still could've done with MOAR explanation.

And finally, after much pointless stalling, I updated my master Morrowind mod list to add some mods to it that I added to my savegame a while back. (...It's a sickness. Really, it is.) Including Constance, who is, honestly, one of the best companions ever. She's like my character's more mischievous twin, with an added predilection for stealing anything that's a) shiny and b) not nailed down. I love her. Definitely one of my new favorite mods.

* WHY ARE MY AVATAR'S ARMS BROKEN, CYAN?! I STILL DO NOT APPROVE.

So, how's everybody's September going so far? Good?

Did you, I dunno, get a job? 'Cause I totally did last week! :D Yep, it's only part-time--about 15 - 20 hrs. a week, once my training's done--but I'm working at the local museum now as a greeter/guide type person. My first day is this Thursday. *glee*

Hooray for good news! Now I can almost afford my car insurance payments!

...So, I found a spider in the shower this morning. In my washcloth. WHILE I WAS WASHING MY FACE.


D:

First of all, for those of you reading this on the LJ RSS feed, but who also have my IJ friended through OpenID: I posted a fanmix a couple of days back. Brand shiny new, too! And as an additional bribe bonus, it's part one of two, so there'll be another mix posted tomorrow.

Second order of business: fic! Monkey Island fic, even. ...No, we did not just time warp back to 2004. I swear. Short fics, but since there's two of them, I posted them on the fic journal anyway. It needed the exercise. And speaking of my fic journal, I'd appreciate comments on how the layout, formatting, etc. is or isn't working for people. Whether or not it's easy to read and all that. And how's the master story index working out? Etc. :)

Title: Desperate Times
Fandom: Monkey Island
Rating: PG
Character(s): Elaine, Largo
Prompt: 039. Map.
Word Count: 250
Disclaimer: Still not LucasArts, still don't own them.
Summary: Desperate times call for strange alliances.
Notes: This fic and the one following it both spring from the same plot bunny (the original notes to which I've apparently lost—please insert a great deal of swearing on my part here), which was a somewhat lengthy fic based around the idea of what would happen if Elaine Marley and Largo LaGrande were forced to work together against LeChuck. Well, besides the obvious, which is homicide. One of these days I may get around to writing the whole fic. Or I may not; who knows.

( Desperate Times )
Title: To The Bone
Fandom: Monkey Island
Rating: PG
Character(s): Elaine, Largo
Prompt: 049. Bone.
Word Count: 246

( To The Bone )

So, I got this e-mail in my inbox today, from "Stemper Tinn," with just the subject line ":(((." As a rule I just junk spam e-mails (which this less than obviously was), but I'm so very glad I made an exception this time.

Because this is what the e-mail said:

God dag,

SSave your love
[Click here]


Which were carried out with the help of testudos, asked louis,
after they had gone a short distance. Indifference. When
i said the cedars was full deities that live in it. Hence,
he that desires from one shop was set upon by a gang of
thugs the domestic mode of life, he may adopt the life it
was not lawfull for them to retourne home, then crept over
on tiptoe and peered at her secretively. With a shower of
terrible weapons of various kinds. That always bears the
marks of his order. An alingin i would request thee to extend
the rites of hospitality have it nicholas explained. Kaviak,
with streaming a tribunal in some respects higher than the
president, feet, or even more the highest lying nearly midway
third while those bulls among men, kripa and yuyutsu,.

That...that is SHEER POETRY. I don't think spam has ever made me laugh so hard in my life. Absurdism FTW. XD

Still suffering from laptop deprivation. Plz send help.

My laptop monitor apparently has one foot in the grave. So, it's gone off to rehab a local repair place for a week or so to get a new one. Good times. Or, you know, not.

In the meantime...well, at least there's fic? I've joined a new fic comm, prompt_100, that issues 100 - 250 word challenges weekly. It's my attempt (possibly in vain) to shake the rust off my keyboard and assorted muses.

So, uh...here goes nothing? *hides*

Title: Last Spring
Fandom: Grim Fandango
Rating: PG
Character(s)/Pairing: Manny, Eva; Sal/Eva if you turn your head to the side and squint
Prompt: 048. blush.
Word Count: 244
Disclaimer: Not LucasArts; don't own them.
Summary: Manny and Eva make one last visit to the meadow. Year 4 coda fic; major spoilers apply.

( At least he'd gotten rid of that ridiculous reaper outfit. )

Crossposted to prompt_100.

You know, if I were to make a list of crap I absolutely did not need this week or, in fact, any week...a broken laptop would have to be at the absolute top.

Yes, to add insult to injury, just as I'm getting over being sick with some sort of death plague, I come home from running errands to find that part of my laptop monitor has suddenly gone all white and flickery.

Yeah. Because I can totally afford to pay for laptop repairs right now. Especially for something that looks as expensive as that epilepsy-enducing nightmare.

Dear Universe:

This kicking me while I'm down thing? It really needs to stop. Effective immediately. And also retroactively.

No love whatsoever,
Me.

ETA: ...And now my image host is busted. %#%&@!*#&!!!! ...Screw it. I'm going to be hiding under the bed if anybody needs me.

Ever had one of those days when you just want to go back to bed and sleep the rest of the day? I'm having one of those days. Feel kind of crappy, like I caught a summer cold or something. Didn't get to see The Dark Knight like my parents and I were going to today, anyway. Crap. I really wanted to see it this weekend, too. :/

And in what I'm sure will come as a shock to everyone...still nothing on the job front. Sort of considering taking a few classes at the local community college and maybe getting a certificate in IT/support desk training, or something like that, because apparently that would be worth more in the current job market than my 4-year BA. (Yes, I am bitter. Damn you, Wall Street! *shakes fist*) But then, since I have no job, I have no idea how I'd pay tuition and textbook fees and that sort of thing.

I love catch-22s. They make me feel like punching things. *facepalm*

Working on some new FSTs, so at least there's that. I just wish I could do something with my writing besides staring at it and going "durrrr."

Also finally gotten back to playing/finishing Sanitarium. ...I love this game like burning, I really do. It reminds me of Psychonauts, really, only for grown-ups.* Now I really want to write a crossover. It even has a chapter that takes place in a circus--that makes the Meat Circus in Psychonauts look like a cakewalk through a field of puppies and daisies.

...Srsly. I love this game so much. *g* Now if only it could get me a job and cure my cold/bug, then it would be perfect.

* Not that Psychonauts doesn't handle some dark/more adult subject matter. It's just that it does it very gingerly, with gloves on, because there's really only so much you can do when your protagonist is a ten year old. Hallucinating (or maybe not) that a morgue corpse just sat up and started talking to you is probably not one of those things.**

** I think that may be one of my favorite parts in the game, if only because I swear, in the background, you can hear what's left of the fuses in the main character's brain blowing. XD

I just found out about this tonight, and god help me, I literally cannot stop laughing: 2007 indie game "Limbo of the Lost" plagiarizes from every other game, ever. Including backgrounds literally print-screen'd out of games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Thief: Deadly Shadows. Oh, and Diablo II. With extra bonus material snatched from movies like, oh, say Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.

Now, at first I was pissed, because plagiarism = srs business. ...Then I took a look at the trailer.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

I dare anyone to make it through the whole thing with a straight face. Blatant plagiarism aside--check 1:23 for some scenes lifted out of Pirates of the Caribbean--it looks like it was put together by a bunch of twelve year olds who were off their ADHD meds. (For the record, I made it until about 0:47 before I started snickering uncontrollably. The "we made this in Windows Movie Maker with a little help from MS Paint" effects just got to be too much.)

I don't think there's a single thing in the game that wasn't stolen. I mean that. Even the main character is rumored to be a default Poser model. They even stole the game engine, Wintermute. I guess a more appropriate title for this game would be something like Limbo of the Wolfenstein Obliviablo II: Curse of the Black Pearl: Deadly Shadows UTK4: Warcraft Painkiller Hill.

...I think that just about covers it. I may have missed a few games in there.

What surprises me is that it took so long for someone to notice the gratuitous and hilarious rip-offs--I mean, come on. I recognized some things in the trailer ripped from Bioshock and I've never even played that friggin' game. Then again, someone probably should've suspected something when it turned out that the developers' official website was hosted on Geocities. ...YA RLY. There's some things I just can't make up.

Oh, and for extra bonus giggling, there's even more trailers! It's a marketing bonanza, people! ...I particularly enjoyed the moment around 0:51, when a character's eyebrow ridge, apparently realizing what the hell sort of game it's trapped in, attempts to make a break for it.

*goes off to LULZ some more*

(Seriously. I can't stop laughing. Send oxygen plz.)

Things have been kind of sort of a lot insane around here. My grandma fell last week and broke her hip, so she had to have surgery and was in the hospital until just yesterday. So...the past week has been mostly comprised of a lot of time spent at the hospital, along with half a dozen coffee runs and a lot of lost sleep. But the good news is that she's doing better now and we were able to move her to a nursing home/rehab facility yesterday so she can keep going with the physical therapy and keep getting better. :)

I also had a job interview on Tuesday evening, for a local part-time receptionist job. Didn't get it, which is okay because I didn't really like the place (or how they conducted the interview--interviewing 12+ people all at the same time = fail) anyway. So...once more into the void, to send out half a dozen applications that I'll never hear anything back from ever again. I think I'm starting to get a little bitter.

And to add insult to injury, one of the mods in my latest Morrowind game went all Ouroboros on me and ate one of its own NPCs, which then corrupted my latest savegame and made the game crash whenever I even thought about loading it. Soooo, since I wasn't all that far into the game, I wanted to keep the mod involved, and there were a few new mods out that I wanted to try, I just went ahead and started a new game. That means my list of MW mods has been updated--some mods were taken out and a few more were tossed into the mix.

Good times all around, really. *eyetwitch*

Would've updated this sooner, but we've had family friends visiting. :) Anyway--despite that, still no joy on the job market front. No new leads, and the part-time job I interviewed for around here...still hasn't gotten back to me yet. Despite promising to. *facepalms* Yay. On the plus side, I've at least been catching up on my reading...?

The first part of Insecticide is finally out, and on a reputable site finally (Steam), so...add it to the list of games to get when I have a job and, you know, money. I spent waaaay too much money on the trip to the interview in Minnesota last month. 3 - 4 days' worth of hotel and gas bills are a bitch. >.> Oh well. Gives me time to work on the giant, towering pile of video games I already have that I either haven't started at all or haven't finished, I suppose. (I'm looking at you, Uru. And Baldur's Gate. And, uh... )

In the meantime! I've been working on fanfic bunnies, but they're all collectively dragging their feet. Some of them are even completely dead in the water, and have been that way for months. So...I thought I'd post from snippets from some of them, just to show off possibly motivate me to work on them a bit more, and to get some actual content going around here. *shifty eyes*

General disclaimer: first and/or second draft material; subject to change without notice, etc.

( This is just the tip of the iceberg, really. Psychonauts, Morrowind, and Full Throttle snippets. )

I'm not dead, I swear. I was holding off on updating my IJ until I had any actual news re: the job interview last week to report. Unfortunately...they still haven't gotten back to me. So, I guess the only news is that there is no news?

I thought the interview went fairly well, though, and the people I met were nice and it seems like a good company. So if they do offer me the job, I may take it. ...Assuming, that is, that I don't go insane from waiting for the phone to ring, first.

In the meantime, I've been making some good progress on the rewrite of "Cassini's Rainbow." It needed a good retooling, and I'm happy with the results so far. No idea when it'll be done, though. Telepathically commanding my phone to ring seems to be sucking up a great deal of my energy.

Also, I have another job interview on Monday--just for a part-time administrative assistant job around town, but still--yay! Jobs!

So, it looks as if basically everyone at LucasArts has been laid off. Again. ...Yeah, this is my surprised face.

In somewhat related news, the PC version of Insecticide, which looks to be pretty cool, is supposed to be out soon. Although personally, I'd be happy if I could just find out what the game's damn system requirements are. It would appear they're some sort of industry secret, as I've yet to find them posted anywhere.

And in completely unrelated news, I just got a phone call this afternoon, and I have a job interview in Alexandria, Minnesota on Wednesday morning, for an editorial assistant job at a health care service-type place. Now how the heck I'm going to get there on time, since it's a 10+ hr. drive, I have no idea...but hey. It's at least another interview, and an in-person one at that.

First order of business: after thinking it over, and especially considering the length of some of the fics I'm working on currently, I decided to go ahead and create an IJ specifically for hosting my longer fics--anything over 3,000 words, basically. That'll be at houseoftroubles. (So named for a fic I haven't even started writing yet. ...I'm just awesome that way.) It's not completely set up yet, as I'm waiting for its paid account time to kick in, but it's getting there. Feel free to friend it if you'd like, but I'll be posting here whenever I update it, so there's really no need. :)

Next: I updated my master Morrowind mod list a few days ago. Some mods were taken out due to conflicts (...whoops?) and a few more were tossed in for good measure. Including my new favorite, the chalk mod, which lets me gleefully graffiti the hell out of...basically everything in sight. *cackle* I am so going to write "Nerevar wuz here" all over Dagoth Ur's citadel the second I get the chance.

Finally: I finished reading Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides a few weeks ago which, as some may know, Ron Gilbert has outed as the real inspiration behind Monkey Island, rather than the Pirates of the Caribbean ride as previously believed. Now having read the book, I can say: ...it's a really good thing they didn't steal anything more from the book than they did. Yes, I can see some glimmers of Monkey Island's roots in there. I also see a lot that's reminiscent of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, curiously enough. But that doesn't help that the book is...well, really kind of bad, with some very mangled and mishandled plot arcs, and a lead female character / love interest who was, somewhere within the first twenty pages, swapped out for a life-sized cardboard model. ...I really hate it when that happens. It makes me want to smash things.

( The rest of this review is cut for spoilers, and because I'm a rambly English major. )

Conclusions? On Stranger Tides might be worth a look-see for any MI (or possibly PotC) fan who's interested in the series' evolution, after a fashion. Or for anyone who might be interested in the novel's one really good point, which is its meditations on voodoo and the nature of magic. People who dislike mangled plots, or who prefer their female characters to be, well, not props for the male characters to carry around from plot point to plot point, on the other hand...they should probably stay well away.

...I feel much better now, having ranted that all out. That is all.

I've been working on some longer (2,000+ word) fics, and they've gotten me wondering: those of you who read my IJ via the LJ RSS feed, which doesn't pick up my LJ-cuts and just posts things all in one big post, how do you feel about those giant posts? Do they annoy the crap out of you? Make you abuse the poor scroll keys?

My thinking is that it might be worthwhile to create a separate fic journal for writing over a certain length. That way the folks on the RSS feed don't have to deal with long (and sometimes potentially spoilery, or just something they're not interested in) posts. And nobody has to friend that second journal if they don't want to--I'd post here with something like just the header/fic info (like the one used here) and a link to the fic itself.

So, those of you on the RSS feed especially, I need your input:

• Separate fic journal: yay or nay?
  
• What story/chapter lengths are you willing to tolerate on the RSS feed? 1,000 words and under? 2,000? Etc. In other words, how long would a story have to be before it gets kicked over to the other journal?

I can has your thoughts now plz?