Digital Eclipse

I am incapable of writing short stories any more. I started on a quick fic just to make myself get words down. 2000 words later it's still only starting and I may have to create an entire holy order.

GDI I just wanted to explore Asgardian marriage rituals.

This post brought to you by the committee for incredibly misleading posts.

And this is why we're so awesome. Because we're srs writers.
( BOOYA )

TL;DR, I've been struck by the My Little pony craze. And now, you all have to put up with it. I'm not sorry. You may blame stormseye and valtyr. I probably won't do this regularly, so be grateful.

The Elements Of Harmony

( The ScreenCaps. Ridiculously Image Heavy )
As you can see, this series is love and sparkle and rainbows. GO WATCH. NOW. I'm only up to Dragonshy, though. Working on it!

Today, I finally accepted that my major form of music is about 20 years late at all times. "That fly girl got some back"? Really? Has anyone ever, ever said that sentence? It puts me in mind of when you're a teenager bringing friends over, and your parents call them "homies" and ask if they like that Nin-Ten-Doh thing. All you can do is shake your head and pray for it to end.

Anyway! You may blame valtyr for any pain I put certain characters through in the near future. She has a way of poking my brain and making me write her crack. One of the major problems I'm having is how to handle a plotline that will slow around the middle. Yay for me, Valtyr loves me and got my brain rolling. In the meantime, I'm still getting going gah! According to my outline, I am on scene seven. Of thirty. :| We are just about to have Major Revelation, which should get things moving, but in the meantime there is a lot of chaff. (sigh) I am a day ahead of where I was at this time last year! Or maybe two. I didn't do the math exactly, just glanced at totals.

My total word count is... 25,079! YAY! (bounces) That means I wrote 3,187 words, and have technically passed my halfway point. It definitely doesn't feel like a halfway though. Not at all. D: Scary.
( Proof that I wrote )

Hello, internet! A few quick updates. Because I am lazy, they are in bullet form.

Valtyr won 5k words off of me at help_pakistan!

Blame Valtyr for this.

Papa came home for a test run. We still have a long way to go with him. :(

Related to above, I am urging Mary to sue the rehab place that Papa is at. He's coming out worse than he went in, and he is not as recovered as he should be because they have been playing Shenanigans.

Spent much of the weekend cleaning, when I wasn't working with Papa.

We finally got a new TV to replace the 30 year old one! In accordance with the laws of balance, our microwave broke immediately thereafter.

I have gotten.. IDK, maybe five hours of sleep in the last 72?

And thus went my weekend.

I have been a pest to my bosses lately. Yesterday, I was officially given permission to:

1) Dye my hair whatever crazy color I can think of. I have been under a false impression that we have a dress code; this is, in fact, a lie. We had a dress code, which only my previous boss continued to enforce after our prior director moved on. I have been officially informed that "blue hair is not unprofessional, and [my boss] is not interested in policing self-expression". I translate that as, "I am not interested in policing self-expression enough to not allow your blue hair, so don't please don't make me have to" and I can roll with that. Current plans are for purple and blue highlights. WE SHALL SEE HOW THAT TURNS OUT.

2) I am allowed to take October 14-18 off from work, so long as I remain available on GTalk for [other boss] to occasionally beg for help when id:10-t errors happen and she needs someone to complain to. THIS MEANS I WILL BE AT WINCON THURSDAY THROUGH MONDAY. FUCK YEAH.

3) Stop cheering that I have a vacation. Really, permission to stop granted. Some of us have kids, and see "a vacation" as any time they're both asleep for more then two hours at a time.

4) Take off my heels when walking over a hard surface, as the clicky-noises make everyone think A Certain Person is coming to corner us all in a desperate attempt for attention, and it makes them jumpy.

5) Converse with Marlynn over our shared wall, as long as we are careful and cease all attempts at amiability at the first signs of any disruption in the time-space continuum.

TL;DR, I love my place of work.
( The Wincon Babble )
Marvel Folk: Has anyone seen a piece of art floating around where Steve has cowl-lines instead of tan-lines (or sunburn lines)? I have been reliably informed that it exists somewhere, but I am feeling leery of posting a search at the comm, for both reasons of laziness and another reason I don't want to drag out. (Suffice to say, I am feeling ignored in a specific instance, and right now I have only the energy to handle this by not doing anything that would usually attract attention. It makes sense in my head.) I will, however, search there if my flist comes up empty-handed, because I want that art.

I still want fic.

Finally: Doom/Loki OTP. FML.

Valtyr and I have the weirdest and yet most awesome conversations.
( DID YOU KNOW )

For the past two days, I have had data entry, which I finally just finished. *rawr* Luckily, everything else is slightly less rawr. I woke up to only mild bitching from my girl bits, and in a few days should even stop hemorrhaging from them. My car is running. Papa proceeds well. The coffee pot has been replaced by one from The Other House. (It is a long, long story, but basically we have a whole second house on the property that no one lives in for various reasons. It's kind of creepy, and reminds me of Roanoke a bit. There's still a glass on the coffee table, but whatever was in it is long gone.) Pepper/Natasha is slightly less blocked. I have achieved two squares on H/C Bingo, and will attempt a third today.

Beta? Anyone? They are short. (dangles) Pica!Tony and a bit of Natasha/Pepper that won't fit in the story.

All in all, I am notably in a better mood. :D I haven't growled at anyone today! The only downer right now is that my aunt has asked me to put my credit on the line to purchase a riding lawn mower. Just so this is in context, we currently have at least 5. All of them are broken ("but they'll be fixed one day!"), because they're badly misused. One of them lasted only three months in winter. And I'm supposed to purchase a sixth and trust that she'll handle the payments, when her husband keeps screwing everyone else's credit over by ignoring his own bills. (And of course, if I say "no", I'm an ungrateful bitch who doesn't remember/care how much trouble she went through when I was a kid to make sure I could visit. Can't forget that—the only reason to be nice to people is so they'll owe you. Family Unfriendly Aesop!) I have an appointment to meet her in a half-hour. Hopefully, this will fail miserably.

In the writing meta (still untitled), I have two written up roughs, and am considering jumping to headers & betaing. Betaing is a current topic, since Cap_Iron had a post on concrit recently, and... Well, what is a beta except really good, deliberate, begged for concrit pre-posting? On top of that, it's important now, since people are hardly going to wait months for me to bestow my questionable wisdom before writing/posting. Whereas setting/characterization/etc are the sort of thing you have to think about while you do it. It just feels a bit backwards, since that's post-writing work and I'm starting at the beginning on everything else. Grah!

As a contrast to Cap_Iron's ancient November 2009 post on beta reading, I was thinking of offering up one of my own shorts as an example. Five hundred words, ruthlessly posted on LJ in all their unpolished glory, with the beta notes included (with permission from the beta, of course). Beta reading is hard, and everyone's different in how they handle it and what they expect. So I figure, the academic approach is good, but sometimes an example is good too, you know?

Also, will someone please stop me from signing up for werewolfbigbang. Please? It's four months to write 10k, which is easy-peasy if it would just stay 10k. But Pepper!femslash is going to be 20k (I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE 10k!!!), Amensia!Tony2 is going to be 20-30k probably, then Vamp!Tony2 will be another Huge Fic Of Pain and Angst and I can't forget girl!Steve2...

(flail)

SOMEONE SAVE ME FROM VALTYR!

That's a bad question for me. I don't WiP as a rule. So perhaps I should say "to abandon or not to abandon". Or to put off to write a new story. I have lots of stories bouncing in my head that need kicking around. Right now, I'm really focused on finishing my bangs. Erm, okay, that's a lie. I should be focused. Instead I'm procrastinating. But still! There will be life after May, and writing will happen, I swear. >:[ SO. I need to think about what will spew onto the page.

This is mostly me pouring my brain onto the page. Don't mind me! :D
( A look into my WiP folder... )
That ends it for actual WiPs. I had less than I thought. Now, for VALTYR (Variously Acquired Literary Thoughts Yukking Randomly). None of these have words attached to them yet, but they are floating around my brain. PH3AR.
( Unwritten ideas on board! )
Excellent. (checks that post off her list) Now I can reference back to this, remember my Bangs, and re-focus. Supposedly. >.>; I also need to round up my comment fics and put them in the relevant comms. Whoops. (lazy)

Hey, why is my Valtyr tag weird? oO