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Personal, Political, Spiritual
02 December 2009 @ 09:00 am
02 December 2009 @ 12:23 am
Current Mood: blah
Current Music: Not my slave by Oingo Boingo
02 December 2009 @ 07:34 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJRMEnBoc
A wonderfully done fan-tribute Youtube-vid that captures the docile aspects of an Active's life.
[ edited by wiesengrund on 2009-12-02 11:09 ]
02 December 2009 @ 07:21 am
http://www.fancast.com/blogs/friday-nigh
Spoilers for other shows as well.
01 December 2009 @ 11:55 pm
01 December 2009 @ 10:44 pm
From Classics & Contemporaries:
[Dennis] Etchison is a writer who must be emphatically urged to stick with the short story if he can possibly do so without starving in the streets, for his novels are uneven at best.
Not that Joshi is wrong or anything.
Well, I did kinda like Darkside...
[Dennis] Etchison is a writer who must be emphatically urged to stick with the short story if he can possibly do so without starving in the streets, for his novels are uneven at best.
Not that Joshi is wrong or anything.
Well, I did kinda like Darkside...
02 December 2009 @ 06:20 am
http://www.iontelevision.com/shows.php?i
Nick stars in "A Golden Christmas" Dec. 13 on ION Television. There's also a preview for the movie off the network's homepage.
02 December 2009 @ 12:00 am
Wednesday's Poem: “Vanishing Point” by Freya Manfred, from Swimming with a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle. Wednesday's Literary Notes: It's the birthday of novelist and short-story writer T.C. Boyle, also known as T. Coraghessan Boyle, born Thomas John Boyle in Peekskill, New York (1948). He got a couple of stories published, and he got accepted into the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and he went on to write novels and books of short stories, including The Tortilla Curtain (1995), After the Plague (2001), Drop City (2003), and most recently, The Women (2009), a novel based on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright, which T.C. Boyle was inspired to write because he lives in a house in California designed by the architect...
02 December 2009 @ 01:03 am
This pendant was in an art gallery this summer and it sold the last weekend of the season. It was sold to someone in New Hampshire, so now I can say my art is in at least two states! Well, at least three ... my mother has one of my pendants and she's in Connecticut.
I like the composition of this one. It's always hard to sell something I really like, but I'm glad to have my art getting out there.
01 December 2009 @ 09:28 pm
Today A. died. I didn't know him very well at all, but what few times I met him, he was 100% awesome. It was like hanging out with Miles Vorkosigan. Not too many people you can say that about.
Yesterday two friends of mine welcomed a brand new baby into the world.
Everybody's crying tonight, but for different reasons. I think I'm going to go hug my guy. 'Night, all.
Yesterday two friends of mine welcomed a brand new baby into the world.
Everybody's crying tonight, but for different reasons. I think I'm going to go hug my guy. 'Night, all.
01 December 2009 @ 06:40 pm
Today was my first 9 hour day, so I had to pack enough to get me through!I packed the last of my Thanksgiving Cabbage Rolls in a wide-mouthed insulated container that kept them nicely warm until lunchtime.
A simple salad with dressing is up above, with an apple, grapes in a smiling mushroom, and more Fruit & Nut Bars.
It worked! I ate lots of fruits and veggies and still stayed nice and full until quitting time!
I'm going to bed now.
01 December 2009 @ 09:39 pm
Well, my mom started her chemo treatments today. So far she's feeling fine...apparently any side effects probably won't be felt for another day or two. The really weird thing right now is that she has to wear mittens when she goes in the fridge, and be very careful to keep her mouth and nose covered if she goes outside, because apparently one side effect of the treatment is possible nerve damage from the cold. I put a sign on the fridge to remind her to wear mitts if she has to get in there.
My poor mommy. :( I'm so worried for her.
Moving on, I'd like to do as I did last year and send out to anyone who wants 'em some NONDENOMINATIONAL HOLIDAY CARDS (the cards themselves are nondenominational, I will of course wish you a happy whatever holiday you are into). I will also strive to actually get them out before the various holidays this year. :'D So if you'd like one, please leave your address in a comment and I will write you one. ♥ Comments are screened of course. And there is absolutely NO obligation to reciprocate, although if you have a holiday card entry up already feel free to link to it, because I know I've missed a bunch on my f-list.
And finally, here is my holiday wish list, because why not. :'D
My poor mommy. :( I'm so worried for her.
Moving on, I'd like to do as I did last year and send out to anyone who wants 'em some NONDENOMINATIONAL HOLIDAY CARDS (the cards themselves are nondenominational, I will of course wish you a happy whatever holiday you are into). I will also strive to actually get them out before the various holidays this year. :'D So if you'd like one, please leave your address in a comment and I will write you one. ♥ Comments are screened of course. And there is absolutely NO obligation to reciprocate, although if you have a holiday card entry up already feel free to link to it, because I know I've missed a bunch on my f-list.
And finally, here is my holiday wish list, because why not. :'D
02 December 2009 @ 01:41 am
I’m sorry to have been gone so long. Major health issues as well as writer’s block on the rants meant that I had little to post. While I think I’ll be posting more regularly again, I can’t promise it.
________________________________________
This rant brought to you by Magic Bites, an urban fantasy novel that I read recently and liked well enough—with the exception of one major irritant. I bet you can guess right now what it is.
1) A traitor can tell you as much information as the villain and with better motivation. What bothers me the most about the villain confessing all his plans to the hero or heroine is that usually, he has no reason to do so. Indeed, it’s far better for him and for the plot if he keeps silent. Suspense and suspension of disbelief are not always cousins, but they are here.
If you absolutely must have someone in the know explain all the villain’s Byzantine plots to the protagonist, why not choose a traitor? Surely there has to be someone in the villain’s organization, army, or commune dissatisfied with the way he or she’s been treated. Or it could be because of something the heroes have done. Someone who’s watched her comrades go down to defeat after defeat can easily conclude that she’d like to be on the winning side just as much.
Now, the traitor might have only partial knowledge, depending on how important she was to the villain’s side. But so what? The partial knowledge means a longer tease, leading up to the all-important revelation scene when the protagonist stands awed by the gloomy glory of the villain’s plan. (See point 2).
There’s no reason to rely on dusty dramatic conventions for that all-important monologue when good old-fashioned self-interest will do.
2) Want a mystery element to your plot? Let the protagonist figure out what the villain wants. Quite a lot of stories have an element of the protagonist being puzzled by the villain’s actions. That is fine. Quite a few of these stories then go on to have the villain explain his actions to the protagonist. Not fine.
Seriously, why would you do this? If you’re going to introduce a mystery connected to the villain into the plot, presumably it’s there for a greater purpose than to be punctured like a balloon at the climax. Not to mention that someone who conceals her motives has a reason to conceal them, and that reason is never mentioned or simply negated if she eats the Exposition Mushrooms.
There may be a limit to how well your protagonist can play detective, but that’s where cleverness (of both writing and characterization) comes into it. Let her work with other people; that will build up the secondary characters more and save your heroine from leaping to “intuitive” conclusions about things she can’t actually know and becoming an Author’s Darling. Let her have a minor revelation that is reasonable and within limits that she can then use to connect the evidence that baffled her before. Let her consciously try out several different explanations, have them fail, and then pick the one that fits best.
All of these will make for a better plot and stronger growth on the protagonist’s part than forcing her to sit down and have the villain pour her ears full of poison.
3) Why would she believe this anyway? I’m trying to remember if I ever read a villain monologue in which the protagonist doubts what s/he’s hearing. I can remember a few novels in which the protagonist asked questions of the “But that doesn’t make sense! What about X?” variety, but none in which the monologue ended and s/he did anything but gape at the villain and accept that every part of the dastardly plan had happened exactly as the villain said it had.
No, seriously. Here you have someone who has tried to start a war/has committed murder/has committed rape/turned people into zombies/has tried to take over the world/has tried to destroy the whole of time and space/has done all of these things at once, and you believe him?
...Why?
If you think about it, the villain has every motive to lie, because when the protagonist tries to stop him, s/he will be trying to stop the wrong damn plan. I’m sure some of the sadistic villains that certain authors favor would get an extra laugh out of that.
Inserting a disbelieving protagonist into the scene would be a great way to avoid the usual pitfalls of the monologue, if for some reason you think you have a villain who would give such a monologue. But the time and place for such things is limited.
Which is why you take advantage of the ones that do exist.
4) Plant the protagonist in a place where she has reason to overhear the plan. This could mean infiltration; perhaps the villain is gathering an army and the protagonist sneaks in as a recruit, precisely to hear the inspiring speech that the villain gives to his troops. It could mean impersonation; the protagonist takes the place of someone close to the villain, if she is a good enough spy or actor. (Of course, there would have to be a good reason that the protagonist knew that the trusted adviser, or whoever else she’s playing, didn’t already know about the plan and could believably ask for information on it). It could mean magical eavesdropping from a distance, perhaps by astral travel, perhaps through the eyes of an insect or bird. It could mean suborning or seducing someone close to the villain.
Any and all of those would work better than the monologue. The villain must, on occasion, discuss his plan with other people. Even if he’s the paranoid sort who would never tell the whole of his scheme to anyone else, he has to give orders to his minions, and the protagonist, if she listened or sneaked around enough, could conceivably put the plan together from the separate sets of those orders.
5) Reconsider the reason for keeping the plan a secret at all. Most fantasy villains have to keep their plans secret because otherwise someone would try to stop them. The problem is, people try to stop them anyway based on whatever cover they come up with. If you’re a villain, and you’re really secretly trying to steal a country’s most precious art treasures to use them in a dastardly dark magic ritual, invading the country on the pretext of a war instead might hide your purpose but will not hinder the natives’ determination to kick your teeth in.
If the villain is powerful enough to start a war, is he in a position of enough power that he doesn’t have to hide his motives? He might well be. The excessive concern for what the public might think is largely a relic of a) times when mass communication is available, thus transmitting information more quickly than happens in your typical fantasy world, and b) times when the public is seen as having power, which would be less likely in a monarchical government. (Of course, if both of those things are true in your fantasy world, then you could have a lot of fun with a villain who has to offer soothing lies to the press). The villain is more likely to have to lie to the people immediately in power around him rather than everyone in the entire world.
This could actually work to your protagonist’s advantage, as well as for the betterment of your plot by obviating the necessity for a villain monologue. Say your protagonist is part of a group traditionally considered unimportant by her society. If the villain doesn’t bother to hide his power or his plan from that group, that might make her all the more determined to stop him.
Villain monologues irritate me for the same reason that idiot plots do: there’s no reason for them to exist, not when you have so many interesting tricks to avoid them.
________________________________________
This rant brought to you by Magic Bites, an urban fantasy novel that I read recently and liked well enough—with the exception of one major irritant. I bet you can guess right now what it is.
1) A traitor can tell you as much information as the villain and with better motivation. What bothers me the most about the villain confessing all his plans to the hero or heroine is that usually, he has no reason to do so. Indeed, it’s far better for him and for the plot if he keeps silent. Suspense and suspension of disbelief are not always cousins, but they are here.
If you absolutely must have someone in the know explain all the villain’s Byzantine plots to the protagonist, why not choose a traitor? Surely there has to be someone in the villain’s organization, army, or commune dissatisfied with the way he or she’s been treated. Or it could be because of something the heroes have done. Someone who’s watched her comrades go down to defeat after defeat can easily conclude that she’d like to be on the winning side just as much.
Now, the traitor might have only partial knowledge, depending on how important she was to the villain’s side. But so what? The partial knowledge means a longer tease, leading up to the all-important revelation scene when the protagonist stands awed by the gloomy glory of the villain’s plan. (See point 2).
There’s no reason to rely on dusty dramatic conventions for that all-important monologue when good old-fashioned self-interest will do.
2) Want a mystery element to your plot? Let the protagonist figure out what the villain wants. Quite a lot of stories have an element of the protagonist being puzzled by the villain’s actions. That is fine. Quite a few of these stories then go on to have the villain explain his actions to the protagonist. Not fine.
Seriously, why would you do this? If you’re going to introduce a mystery connected to the villain into the plot, presumably it’s there for a greater purpose than to be punctured like a balloon at the climax. Not to mention that someone who conceals her motives has a reason to conceal them, and that reason is never mentioned or simply negated if she eats the Exposition Mushrooms.
There may be a limit to how well your protagonist can play detective, but that’s where cleverness (of both writing and characterization) comes into it. Let her work with other people; that will build up the secondary characters more and save your heroine from leaping to “intuitive” conclusions about things she can’t actually know and becoming an Author’s Darling. Let her have a minor revelation that is reasonable and within limits that she can then use to connect the evidence that baffled her before. Let her consciously try out several different explanations, have them fail, and then pick the one that fits best.
All of these will make for a better plot and stronger growth on the protagonist’s part than forcing her to sit down and have the villain pour her ears full of poison.
3) Why would she believe this anyway? I’m trying to remember if I ever read a villain monologue in which the protagonist doubts what s/he’s hearing. I can remember a few novels in which the protagonist asked questions of the “But that doesn’t make sense! What about X?” variety, but none in which the monologue ended and s/he did anything but gape at the villain and accept that every part of the dastardly plan had happened exactly as the villain said it had.
No, seriously. Here you have someone who has tried to start a war/has committed murder/has committed rape/turned people into zombies/has tried to take over the world/has tried to destroy the whole of time and space/has done all of these things at once, and you believe him?
...Why?
If you think about it, the villain has every motive to lie, because when the protagonist tries to stop him, s/he will be trying to stop the wrong damn plan. I’m sure some of the sadistic villains that certain authors favor would get an extra laugh out of that.
Inserting a disbelieving protagonist into the scene would be a great way to avoid the usual pitfalls of the monologue, if for some reason you think you have a villain who would give such a monologue. But the time and place for such things is limited.
Which is why you take advantage of the ones that do exist.
4) Plant the protagonist in a place where she has reason to overhear the plan. This could mean infiltration; perhaps the villain is gathering an army and the protagonist sneaks in as a recruit, precisely to hear the inspiring speech that the villain gives to his troops. It could mean impersonation; the protagonist takes the place of someone close to the villain, if she is a good enough spy or actor. (Of course, there would have to be a good reason that the protagonist knew that the trusted adviser, or whoever else she’s playing, didn’t already know about the plan and could believably ask for information on it). It could mean magical eavesdropping from a distance, perhaps by astral travel, perhaps through the eyes of an insect or bird. It could mean suborning or seducing someone close to the villain.
Any and all of those would work better than the monologue. The villain must, on occasion, discuss his plan with other people. Even if he’s the paranoid sort who would never tell the whole of his scheme to anyone else, he has to give orders to his minions, and the protagonist, if she listened or sneaked around enough, could conceivably put the plan together from the separate sets of those orders.
5) Reconsider the reason for keeping the plan a secret at all. Most fantasy villains have to keep their plans secret because otherwise someone would try to stop them. The problem is, people try to stop them anyway based on whatever cover they come up with. If you’re a villain, and you’re really secretly trying to steal a country’s most precious art treasures to use them in a dastardly dark magic ritual, invading the country on the pretext of a war instead might hide your purpose but will not hinder the natives’ determination to kick your teeth in.
If the villain is powerful enough to start a war, is he in a position of enough power that he doesn’t have to hide his motives? He might well be. The excessive concern for what the public might think is largely a relic of a) times when mass communication is available, thus transmitting information more quickly than happens in your typical fantasy world, and b) times when the public is seen as having power, which would be less likely in a monarchical government. (Of course, if both of those things are true in your fantasy world, then you could have a lot of fun with a villain who has to offer soothing lies to the press). The villain is more likely to have to lie to the people immediately in power around him rather than everyone in the entire world.
This could actually work to your protagonist’s advantage, as well as for the betterment of your plot by obviating the necessity for a villain monologue. Say your protagonist is part of a group traditionally considered unimportant by her society. If the villain doesn’t bother to hide his power or his plan from that group, that might make her all the more determined to stop him.
Villain monologues irritate me for the same reason that idiot plots do: there’s no reason for them to exist, not when you have so many interesting tricks to avoid them.
01 December 2009 @ 06:18 pm
A craving for a savory sweet potato dish yielded this dinner:
-Peel 3 medium sweet potatoes, cut into chunks, steam or boil until soft.
-Meanwhile, slice up one package of veggie sausage and sautee, adding one diced apple, a couple of chopped garlic cloves and one diced onion midway through cooking the sausage.
- When potatoes are cooked toss with margarine, salt and curry powder.
- Mix it all together and eat with gusto.
-Peel 3 medium sweet potatoes, cut into chunks, steam or boil until soft.
-Meanwhile, slice up one package of veggie sausage and sautee, adding one diced apple, a couple of chopped garlic cloves and one diced onion midway through cooking the sausage.
- When potatoes are cooked toss with margarine, salt and curry powder.
- Mix it all together and eat with gusto.
01 December 2009 @ 11:40 pm
Compares the ending of "I Was Made To Love You" to the ending of "Retreat."
01 December 2009 @ 05:31 pm
school notes.
got a high grade on the last german wiki.
did very poorly on the language part of the german film presentation, but the other students think the photos and message made up for it.
professor hotness decided that we get to have extensions for our papers, all of us, as well as for our wikis and project blogs. hell, he even handed BACK our final exams and said we can study and finish them on thursday.
got a high grade on the last german wiki.
did very poorly on the language part of the german film presentation, but the other students think the photos and message made up for it.
professor hotness decided that we get to have extensions for our papers, all of us, as well as for our wikis and project blogs. hell, he even handed BACK our final exams and said we can study and finish them on thursday.
01 December 2009 @ 04:14 pm
01 December 2009 @ 09:35 pm
Portfolio.com looks at the ongoing question of whether we need women's media.
The White House doesn't like gay people.
In Russia the "Miss Positive" pageant queen is being discriminated against in trying to adopt back her own son.
01 December 2009 @ 03:02 pm
Here is the table of contents and preliminary cover for Dark Faith, edited by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry "Slushy" Gordon. The theme, of course is horror and dark fantasy story and poems (poems?!) about religion.
Ooh, I'm ...and others! (link leads to larger cover image)
POEM: “The Story of Belief-Non” by Linda D. Addison
"Ghosts of New York" by Jennifer Pelland
“I Sing a New Psalm” by Brian Keene
“He Who Would Not Bow” by Wrath James White
“Zen and the Art of Gordon Dratch’s Damnation” by Douglas F. Warrick
“Go and Tell It on the Mountain” by Kyle S. Johnson
“Different from Other Nights” by Eliyanna Kaiser
POEM: “Lilith” by Rain Graves
“The Last Words ofDutch Schultz Jesus Christ” by Nick Mamatas
"To the Jerusalem Crater" by Lavie Tidhar
“Chimeras & Grotesqueries” by Matt Cardin
“You Dream” by Ekaterina Sedia
"Mother Urban's Booke of Dayes" by Jay Lake
“The Mad Eyes of the Heron King” by Richard Dansky
“Paint Box, Puzzle Box” by DT Friedman
“A Loss For Words” by John C. Hay
“Scrawl” by Tom Piccirilli
POEM: “C{her}ry Carvings” by Jennifer Baumgartner
“Good Enough” by Kelli Dunlap
“First Communion” by Geoffrey Girard
“The God of Last Moments” by Alethea Kontis
"Ring Road" by Mary Robinette Kowal
“The Unremembered” by Chesya Burke
POEM: “Desperata” by Lon Prater
“The Choir” by Lucien Soulban
“Days of Flaming Motor Cycles” by Catherynne M. Valente
“Miz Ruthie Pays Her Respects” by Lucy A. Snyder
POEM: “Paranoia” by Kurt Dinan
"Hush" by Kelly Barnhill
"Sandboys" by Richard Wright
“In Abstentia” by Gary A. Braunbeck
One hundred thousand words of horror-y goodness, coming one of these days from somewhere!
Ooh, I'm ...and others! (link leads to larger cover image)
POEM: “The Story of Belief-Non” by Linda D. Addison
"Ghosts of New York" by Jennifer Pelland
“I Sing a New Psalm” by Brian Keene
“He Who Would Not Bow” by Wrath James White
“Zen and the Art of Gordon Dratch’s Damnation” by Douglas F. Warrick
“Go and Tell It on the Mountain” by Kyle S. Johnson
“Different from Other Nights” by Eliyanna Kaiser
POEM: “Lilith” by Rain Graves
“The Last Words of
"To the Jerusalem Crater" by Lavie Tidhar
“Chimeras & Grotesqueries” by Matt Cardin
“You Dream” by Ekaterina Sedia
"Mother Urban's Booke of Dayes" by Jay Lake
“The Mad Eyes of the Heron King” by Richard Dansky
“Paint Box, Puzzle Box” by DT Friedman
“A Loss For Words” by John C. Hay
“Scrawl” by Tom Piccirilli
POEM: “C{her}ry Carvings” by Jennifer Baumgartner
“Good Enough” by Kelli Dunlap
“First Communion” by Geoffrey Girard
“The God of Last Moments” by Alethea Kontis
"Ring Road" by Mary Robinette Kowal
“The Unremembered” by Chesya Burke
POEM: “Desperata” by Lon Prater
“The Choir” by Lucien Soulban
“Days of Flaming Motor Cycles” by Catherynne M. Valente
“Miz Ruthie Pays Her Respects” by Lucy A. Snyder
POEM: “Paranoia” by Kurt Dinan
"Hush" by Kelly Barnhill
"Sandboys" by Richard Wright
“In Abstentia” by Gary A. Braunbeck
One hundred thousand words of horror-y goodness, coming one of these days from somewhere!
01 December 2009 @ 04:32 pm
professor hotness: king of the awkward moment.
after classes i showed my friends, along with the professor, the pics of my kids and grandkids.
first he asked when i chose to have such a large family (note: not WHY). then he kind of quietly disappeared back into his office.
then i told him as i was leaving with one of his personal books, that i had dropped out of college when i was 17 to get married. he said he was glad, because otherwise i wouldn't be here now.
O.o
this was after he pretty much grilled me on how i was when i walked into his class. i was VERY taken aback and replied "well, i'm here". he said "really, is that it? so how was your holiday?"
maybe i'm being TOO aloof.
after classes i showed my friends, along with the professor, the pics of my kids and grandkids.
first he asked when i chose to have such a large family (note: not WHY). then he kind of quietly disappeared back into his office.
then i told him as i was leaving with one of his personal books, that i had dropped out of college when i was 17 to get married. he said he was glad, because otherwise i wouldn't be here now.
O.o
this was after he pretty much grilled me on how i was when i walked into his class. i was VERY taken aback and replied "well, i'm here". he said "really, is that it? so how was your holiday?"
maybe i'm being TOO aloof.