i got my cat one of those giant hamster wheel things so she could entertain herself then i showed her how it worked by putting her on it and spinning it slowly then faster then as fast as possible. and the good news is that she looooves her wheel. she just loooves being a hamster cat. but the bad news is that she doesn’t know how to use it solo so she will sit by it and scream until i spin the wheel for her. and if i dont go fast enough shell scream some more. so im hunched over this big wooden wheel turning it like igor and my cat is running so fast that shes panting like a dog and if I slow down even a little she’ll go MEEEOOOWWWWW and i frankly think I need to join a union or something. that bingus has no respect for me.
my corner store guy is a 50 year old man who’s my best friend in the world and recently he was like “you’re too pretty to be single I have some nephews you should meet. very handsome!” and I was like “a niece might be more up my alley” and he just got more excited and said “ah even better! I was overselling my nephews but my nieces are very beautiful”
"No one wants to go in there when a random f***ing tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country." -- oil industry investor, about Venezuela
I was reading a quote from an Exxon exec, talking about how all of Exxon's assets had been nationalized by Venezuela TWICE. Yeah, not a place where oil companies are going to be eager to rush back in to rebuild their infrastructure.
Not going to bother talking about a certain person's habit of changing international policy via social media posts, waste of finger and mental energy.
I want to read for fun, for pleasure, to reread old favourites, to read fan-fiction and not to be waylaid by 'should read..' or 'best of...' I'm planning to visit brick-and-mortar bookshops and take my own sweet time browsing and selecting a book to read. I'm going to pick a book which I want to read right now this minute, not one which looks interesting and will just be added to the TBR pile.
Inspired by this Tom Gauld cartoon which I have printed out and stuck on to the fridge.
The first print edition of a baihe novel to be open for pre-order for the year is Yu Shuang's tragic contemporary romance The Guest (嘉宾), which is being brought out under the title 别时茫茫 (going to just dodge the task of translation this because my brain is currently not up to the task of translating a Ba Juyi reference). This is a mainland edition and will be in traditional Chinese and censored (I'm kind of curious to see how they're going to manage the censoring of a tragedy that fundamentally arises from institutional and societal homophobia). Pre-orders can be made via the following bookshops:
How is tomorrow Monday again already?! Someone stole my weekend!
According to yesterday's poll, approximately 75% of respondents think about structure in some fashion while writing. POV sections, parallels and repetitions got the most votes.
As for me, I used to always pay attention to structure especially in terms of parallels and mirroring sections and such, even for very short pieces, but I lost that a little bit in recent years. I need to focus more on that again - I always felt it made things better! But for longer pieces, structure is still a basic part of how I conceive of a story.
One of the most obvious structuring elements is with multiple POVs, and I always try to have them alternate in a clear pattern. For example, my Yuletide fic this year has four chapters, structured by location, and the POV pattern was AAB-BBA:
Chapter 1 - POV A Chapter 2 - POV A, POV B Chapter 3 - POV B Chapter 4 - POV B, POV A
The story is mostly written in close limited 3rd person, but I also started each chapter with a more distant/mythic omniscient POV and then zoomed in on the character.
60% of respondents agree that no poll is complete without tickyboxes. My people! *g*
I haven't been keeping up with Star Trek for ages, but I was curious about the upcoming Starfleet Academy show and looked into things a little. And video reviews aren't usually my thing, but I just watched most of this video, and it makes it sound very promising! Here's hoping.
Today's writing
Instead of working to finish anything, I've started something new. Why, brain, why?
I refuse to start forgetting to post here in January. I absolutely refuse. I'm going to make it to February if it kills me.
Writing is going well! On writing days, I'm averaging almost 2k. It's great and I'm above where I need to be to hit my wordcount goal (40k on a specific project) for the month. The goal used to be 30k on a specific project, finishing it, but uh. It's gonna take more than that to hit the end. So, hopefully it'll be done at 40k. I'm 60% of the way through the wordcount, and I think????? I'm 60% through the story?
idk
Is anyone else extremely stressed about what we're going to replace discord with if it goes AI? Is anyone else extremely stressed that some friends are going to refuse to move and you won't be able to talk to them anymore? :\ I vote we all go back to using IRC. For the record. Stop complicating things with icons and voice chat and etc. I just want to do typeytypey with my friends.
(I'm the_wanlorn over there, also ftr)
Anyway. Back to writing probably. Later my gators.
Incredible work by Noel's socmed person. The combo of text and image is *chef's kiss*. Original is here on his official insta. (No I am still not over Liam appearing on Noel's socials in case you were wondering!!)
I recommended the first story in this series when I read it in Yuletide, suspecting but not being sure at the time that it was by sanguinity.
I love William Bush's POV too:
Too Late, Too Late (2008 words) by sanguinity Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Hornblower (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: William Bush, Horatio Hornblower Additional Tags: POV William Bush, Episode: e07 Loyalty (Hornblower), Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss Series: Part 2 of The Worst Part of Waking Up Summary:
Bush is too late to the beach to stop the firing squad.
I FOUND IT AGAIN. I read a post on Tumblr a while back on a particularly nicely done instance of color symbolism with Londo on B5, and I finally found it. (More beneath the cut.)
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