Prompt 100

#1. Your Fav Perfume: Vanilla scents
#2. Your Fav Color(s): red & light aqua-blue
#3. Your Fav thing you love to buy: Comic Books, Shoes, and Wee Forest Folk
#4. Your Fav male actor(outside of QaF): I don't think my favs are necessarily the most fantastic actors, rather just actors who do really great in things I love...Toss up between Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman and Alec Baldwin. You all think I'm weird now don't you?
#5. Your Fav female singer: Brandi Carlile or Shirley Manson
#6. Your Fav Food: Mexican
#7. Your Fav place to vist: Not possible to pick 1. Olympic Peninsula, Coastal Maine, Boston, Quebec (the entire province and the city)
#8. Your Fav flower: No favorite...My favorite thing is to get a bouquet of different brightly colored flowers.
#9. Your Fav TV show(outside of QaF): Glee currently, and anything Joss Whedon has produced.
#10. A Fav Movie, one you've watched more than 10 times: Love Actually (I've watched many more than 10 times)

snagged from all over.

Been imprisoned in the meatspace since Thursday evening, due to the rains disrupting the wiring. (Technically, it's still not fixed but I'm at work). Thanks to the cellphone with the independent ISP, I haven't lost my mind - but it's more like peeking through the tiny barred window. The only site which is not pain in the ass is Twitter (yay for Twitter!) 140 characters had never looked so reasonable! The phone supports 1024, but the screen refresh slows to a crawl after entering the first 200 or so. I'm always thinking maybe I should invest into a more sophisticated Internet-enabled device - mostly for emergencies. And then I'm thinking that it doesn't happen too often, and also that I shouldn't be so pathetic and start falling apart the moment my link to the Collective is severed. Still haven't developed an effective strategy for coping. Every time when the problem is over, it seems unnecessary...

The lack of online distractions didn't prove to be beneficial for writing. Also, I'm not sure that free rambling on random subjects makes a great piece of fiction in the long run. But it's a popular Nano-workaround, and it's fun! I'm sure it's useful for something. At least, to push my way through the required limit of crap writing :)

( snippet: making fun of you know who )

So this morning the monthly started so I told my mom that I was running out to the drug store to get some pads. To which she then asks me where I keep going this week as there was a lot of kilometres on the Equnoix (what I normally drive) this week. And it took me off guard as I tell them exactly where I'm going whenever I go out. And I know I did more driving that usual this week but I told them where I went each time.

Monday - Went to Chapters to get a book for class.
Tuesday - Work
Wednesday - Didn't drive
Thursday - School for a study session
Friday - Class, home, then out to Katrina's.

Only thing I didn't tell them was that I stopped at Lore's on my way to Katrina's but its not out of the way or anything. And Mom's being driving it around everywhere when I'm at school, so the km will add up. Kinda hurtful that they would think I'm sneaking behind their backs.

Still waiting on more info on the moving out front. I'm kinda getting annoyed with AJ and his lack of getting his dad to meet with us to discuss if I am going to be the roommate or not. I really want to know soon, and so does my family as it effects them as much as it does me. Hopefully he'll know this weekend.

Other than that, piles of school work this month, and I'm going to a con next weekend (that in hindsight I probably shouldn't but its the last one I'll be able to go to before Con-G in Feburary.

A-AWESOME

IT'S ALREADY OUT. HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS.

On the other hand, I was watching it going 'I really hope Lola gets to do more' and she doesn't even appear once. **sulks**

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Actually, you know...it's probably better if you don't ask about day 5. Suffice it to say that my brain's gone and swanned off for the day.

I at least met my quota for the last couple of days. It's also slowly starting to dawn on me that, wait. I'm technically writing two 25K stories here. And the first one's so far been around 7K worth of words of jack-all happening.

...Whoops. Looks like I'd best go find a muse to slam against the plot accelerator.

I've also decided to change the Google Docs thing around a bit. Since I can't figure out how to just update a .doc file, rather than upload a new one (yes, I know, copy/paste, but that screws with the formatting, shut up), I went ahead and stuck it in a shared folder.

So, yes. New and permanent Google Docs link. It should work the same as before, where you don't need a Google/Gmail account to view the file.

6822 / 50000 words. 14% done!

I have never read or seen the Dragon Ball, and yet when I saw a page about the history of Honolulu on their site (.gov and everything) that mentioned "King Kamehameha I, who conquered Oahu in a decisive battle..." my mind went straight there.

**shakes head** Internet fandom osmosis is no joke.

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Dear Bardock:

I've got this friend. I'll call him Carrot.

Then I've also got this female friend. I'll call her Parsley.

You see, I've really got a thing for Parsley, but she seems to have a thing for Carrot. Now, Carrot's my best friend and I know better than to try to kill him. What should I do?

Signed,
A Tomato in Love

---

Dear Toma:

I know it's you, stupid. Don't you have better things to do than write to my advice column? I told you a thousand times--I DON'T HAVE A THING FOR YOU-KNOW-WHO. She's free. Go for her. I DON'T WANT HER.

----------

Dear Bardock:

I...killed my brother. I actually killed my brother.

I guess you should know a little about me.

I was raised in a clan of shinobi. When I was a little kid, my older brother slaughtered my whole entire family except himself and me so that I would get angry enough to kill him.

And I killed him.

Why do I feel so guilty? W-was I bad? Was I that horrible?

Signed,
Shinobi on the Run

---

Shinobi,

Boo hoo my brother killed my family! Oh dear god I killed him! Are you actually listening to yourself? I'VE BEEN ENSLAVED BY AN INTERGALACTIC OVERLORD BENT ON SLAUGHTERING MY RACE.

If you ask me, it's a good thing you killed him off. That's the saiyan way to deal with problems too. Break it or kill it.

You probably feel guilty because you're an inferior race to a saiyan--we don't feel guilty when we kill mooks. No, we actually party after that. You should go party. You took down a thorn in your side.

----------

Dear Bardock:

I have this annoying little thorn in my side. I'll call him King Tut. Now, King Tut always beats me at the same damn card game every damn time and I'm sick and tired of it and I won't rest until I beat him.

That is, unless I can kill him.

Do you think I should?

Signed,
Bedeviled in Domino

---

Bedeviled,

DO IT. KILL HIM.
How many times do I have to say it's the saiyan way of dealing with problems? EVERYONE SHOULD DEAL WITH THINGS THE SAIYAN WAY.

If you had one night left to live, what would you do? Would you prefer to spend your final night with a loved one or alone? What would you choose for your last meal?

I'll request foie gras, because I've heard it's something extraordinary but had never an opportunity to try it; failing that, a steak and red wine would do nicely. As for the loved ones, I thought they don't allow them in jail? Anyway, I'd rather stay alone, in case I freak out or something - better for them to remember me as I was :) I'll ask for some inspiring book to read, such as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ;)

I need to stop getting, like actually angry over the shit Allan Ball does to Charlaine Harris's books, but this just stirred up boiling anger that never left me.

Ball said the Vampire King of Mississippi is coming in season three. He provides a contrast to Sophie-Anne, the Vampire Queen of Louisiana (Evan Rachel Wood). “He’s older,” Ball said. “He’s much more mature. He’s much more methodical and grounded. She’s kind of crazy. To me, she’s kind of like Paris Hilton/Lindsay Lohan, where she has a very short attention span and she’s very, very egomaniacal and very self-obsessed and doesn’t really think about her actions, whereas the Vampire King is very much an adult. He has an agenda. He has things he wants to achieve. I think he’s much more formidable than she is.”

So basically, he took Sophie-Anne's character and gave it to a man. Who is, of course, this being True Blood, 'much more formidable.' And set her up to take a disastrous fall and have 'higher' vampire authorities PO'd at her.

I mean, he spends the entire second season undermining and sidelining Sookie--I'm not even mentioning Calypso being turned into Maryanne--and a fair amount of the first season too, so I'm not surprised, just frustrated all over again.

ALLAN BALL. SOOKIE DOES NOT NEED POWERS TO BE AWESOME. SHOVE OFF.

(Source.)


All I've been doing is complaining lately!

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I'm not sure why Uther being an asshole is supposed to surprise/alarm/set off warning bells for anyone. So he indiscriminately murders his people, but they're shocked if he taxes them? He isn't acting any different than usual, beyond fawning over Sarah Parrish, who is actually kind of awesome.

ETA: Guys, I can't help but think that saying 'Uther is good king except for the whole magic thing!' is like saying, 'he's a good boyfriend except for the bit where he stabs me in the face when I breathe in the vicinity of another man!'

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On Hating Female Characters.

For a while now I’ve been thinking about how many readers seem to hate female characters more than they hate male. Or rather that the same behaviour from a male character is okay but someone inexcusable in a female.

NO KIDDING. I read and enjoyed this post a while back, but a link popped up on my flist, and I returned to it and decided in light of some recent comments I'd read that it needs to be sung from the rooftops.

She also has a very good post here: The Advantages of Being a White Writer Highly recommended.

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ACK~!!! I have just briefly peaked into the challenge at qaf_scavenger and there is SO MUCH graphicy goodness I don't know what to upload first!

OMG I MISSED THE INTERNETS AND ALL OF YOU!!!

I've been tv and internetless for a week. IT'S BEEN HORRIBLE. And then my phone went out on me too. So I didn't even have internet access there. *sobs* But it did give me some time to do things I should do. I like move into our new house!!

Currently it's a disaster of boxes and half unpacked boxes spewing their contents in all directions. As soon as it's not I shall post pics.

The Uverse man was here today installing everything. Which means C did not get a chance to sleep (she works nights) which means I can't wake her up and ask her why our pretty new TV apparently has no sound. I've tried everything. Pretty HD picture, but no words coming out of it.

And I can't ask her why the internets are SO SLOW. But at least I have them. WOOOHOOO~!!!!!!

I'm sure I have missed out on tons. And unpacking will leave me little time to catch up...but I'm going to try.

BECAUSE OMG I HAVE MISSED YOU MY FLIST!!!!!!

My Multi-Cultural class--a class that tries to teach the students to acknowledge/understand/fight racism, sexism, hetereosexism, ableism, classism (and on)--upsets me, badly.

I walk away from every class where I have to interact with my fellow students feeling indefinably sick, with a greasy, twisting knot of anxiety, dissatisfaction and unhappiness in my stomach. I trip over my words. I get upset over the issues and can't express myself properly, especially since my tendency is to shut down and fold inward when upset; they don't even listen to statements the teacher has made five seconds earlier, they're so convinced they're right, why would they listen to me?

I went to this class because I thought it would--I don't know, teach me, be a place for discussion, and I have learned and I'm glad for it, but I just.

I feel so awful and miserable and twisted up in knots almost every class.

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It appears that simply getting the words out on the screen is not a problem when you know the direction and succeed to (temporarily) suppress the need of choosing the right words. The real problem is when you're not sure about the direction anymore.

Probably my outline sucked from the start because I hadn't invested enough efforts into it. Or maybe it's the opposite - I had over-planned it. I'm sticking to the basic idea but most of the details keep changing - and I'd rather not scribble whatever comes to my mind, because eventually it leads to dead ends and contradictions.

In fact, I can make a break, write out the updated outline, as detailed as necessary, and then continue to flesh it out. At least I was right that it's easier to work with several separate episodes. I'm approx. halfway through the first one. There's also a brief introduction, which had been written truly on the spur of the moment, I don't know if I should keep it at the end, due to the immanent "personal issues". It would look fine on TV though :( and maybe I should stop being paranoid.

Funny... the updated plot seems to get the "message" clearer, more consistent with my original vision. I didn't want it to appear like good people doing the bad things - rather, good people trying to do the good things (isn't it what all Star Trek is about ;) and the only difference is what they perceive as good. At least, I hope there's a difference :)

Oh well... stop rambling, back to work...

There's plot! There's plot threads coming together by way of answers! There's the strong potential for some actual resolution!

There's not enough Rinali.

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Well, uh.

I made some remark about smug villains/antagonists/anti heroes not being my thing. Then I accidentally watched a clip of Supernatural! Now smug heroes are so far beyond 'not my thing' it's a little alarming.

bleurgh, Dean Winchester, why such a misogynistic sack of shit

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Wow I actually cannot believe Joss Whedon ever had the sheer gall to call himself a feminist. GUESS WHAT. YOU'RE NOT. END OF STORY.

Spoilers within, but they're warned for before they're reached.


I was remembering Nalini Singh's novella in her Angel's Blood series, one about Ashwini and the vampire she hunts on and off. In this, the angel--who is pretty much a carbon copy of Raphael--is treated the way a sane person would treat them. She's creeped out by his come-on, spooked, and hopes to interact with him as little as possible. At the time I didn't put much thought into it, but the only difference I can really come up with between the angel and archangel is that one--the one acknowledged as negative--is black.

Mm. Well.

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...oh hai, again.

I'm still keeping on keeping on--squeaked past the word quota today with about ten words to spare. And those were, for some reason, some very hard won words. The rust is trying to creep back onto my word processor.

It doesn't help that I managed to break my cemented-in retainer (which I've had for 8+ years, with instructions to leave it in until it falls out which, surprise, it is now attempting to do). Fortunately in a way that doesn't involve my tongue getting impaled, but still. I foresee my doing a lot of writing at the dentist's office tomorrow. Oh, joy.

Google Docs link is still here; for those of you who may have read yesterday's installment, the trainwreck continues under the large-ish horizontal divider line. Constructive comments continue to be welcome.

3462 / 50000 words. 7% done!

I was thinking about white privilege, and racism and all the -isms and the baggage that goes with it. On top of what I have as a white person, even as a girl and a feminist there have been and probably still are sexist views that I've subconsciously absorbed and not yet unearthed or examined.

A while back I was reading Anne Bishop and she made a remark about 'feminine' in her books. The quote is on my profile, I liked it so much, and it goes like this: "....the gist of it being whatever a woman enjoyed wearing was feminine and whatever she didn't enjoy wearing wasn't.""

And I had to reevaluate what I, a girl, thought of as feminine. I mean, what does feminine mean?

1. pertaining to a woman or girl: feminine beauty; feminine dress
....
4. belonging to the female sex; female

(I deleted the two between because, to be frank, they very demonstrably displayed the very cultural manipulation of roles that I'm complaining about.)

And what is our cultural view of 'feminine', especially in regards to clothing? Delicate. Pink. Satin. Lace. Frivolous. And what cultural image does all that feed into? The 'fragile' woman. The one that needs to be protected. She can't run in it, and it sure as hell isn't going to offer her any protection against the world. The one that needs the man to make decisions for her (frivolous, clothes as too important) and, for example, control her money.

So when you're talking about theoreticals, and societal views, and stereotypes and archetypes and tropes, fine. You can use feminine in that manner all you like. But what 'feminine' really means is 'female.'

And we can be whatever we damn well want to be.

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